Let’s Talk Hoops

There’s been a lot written about the Knicks not drafting Brandon Jennings, and given how his recent exploits are juxtaposed to Jordan Hill’s accumulation of splinters in his butt, it hasn’t been very positive.  Looking at a recent Chad Ford piece, it’s clear that there was a lot of uncertainty regarding Brandon Jennings.  He was in no way a slam dunk that the Knicks foolishly missed out on.  Likewise, the book on Jordan Hill will not be closed for a very long time, and it’s very possible that he could turn out to be a better play than Brandon Jennings, or at least competent enough to render the debate moot.

What’s worth looking into is whether or not the Knicks process was right, which is all you can really ask for.  More often than not, a good process will yield good results, so all you can do is make educated decisions and pray they work out.  Was the process right?  Well, looking at Donnie Walsh’s quotes on Jennings, the answer is a resounding, “No.”

When asked about Jennings, Walsh said that he didn’t  “have a good enough feel” for Jennings.  Oh, ok.  That makes it fine.  Walsh didn’t do enough homework on Jennings, so he didn’t feel comfortable drafting him.  What does a basketball GM even do?  There aren’t any farm teams.  There aren’t tons of things to keep an eye on.  There aren’t thousands of players you need to comb through to scout.  The Knicks don’t have a first round pick in 2010, and there’s a dearth of young talent on the roster; take the time to make sure you know what Jennings has to offer.

How much time did Walsh spend on Steph Curry? Or Ricky Rubio?  Players who would never fall to the Knicks.  How many daydreams did Walsh have of Steph Curry naked, covered in rose petals?  I understand Jennings didn’t get a lot of playing time in Italy.  Is it that hard to send a scout to the gyms where he practices?  You can’t just say “eeeehhhhhhh” to a player because you’re lazy.  You need young stars and this is about the only way you’re getting one.  Suck it up and figure out what he has to offer, rather than asking your assistant to tell you what Curry’s favorite color is again.

http://espn.go.com/blog/TrueHoop/post/_/id/10335/botching-the-italian-jo

Players I Hate

I apologize for the lack of posts in the last few weeks.  To be honest, I was burned out on baseball.  After three incredibly painful seasons culminated with a Yankee/Philly World Series… I needed some time off.  Thankfully, we have a great hot stove on the horizon, with tons of great players to pursue: Bengie Molina, Jason Marquis, and Randy Wolf!  Anyway, as I’m paralyzed with the fear that Omar will botch this offseason, I’ll run down a list of players I do not want anywhere near the Mets in the vain hope that somehow this reaches somebody in the FO and makes them realize their folly.  A message in a bottle if you will.

First up: Alex Cora.

Yes, he’s “gritty.”  Yes, he’s a “winner.”  Yes, he has a beard.  That doesn’t mean he’s good at baseball, and it doesn’t mean he should be on the Mets next year.  This team has serious issues that go far beyond facial hair and scraptitude.  There is a lack of talent on the team.  Reyes is coming off an injury with an unknown prognosis.  Castillo is still an injury timebomb and has deplorable range.  It’s completely unacceptable to have the back-up to both middle infield positions be somebody as bad as Cora.  Cora is terrible at shortstop, and at this point of his career is likely subpar at second.  He’s terrible offensively, and is an injury risk himself.  When people use the excuse “he can’t play every day,” then he shouldn’t be on a team that has injury risks and depth issues.

As last year illustrated, depth is incredibly important.  Not just in the sense that injuries happen and you need competent players to step in, but also in the sense that you can overcome raw talent by having the ability to exploit match-ups and use the entire roster.  Last year the Rays turned 475 at-bats of Gabe Gross and Gabe Kapler into a 2 win player.

It’s inconceivable to have your primary back-up MIF, behind two injury risks, to be replacement level or worse.  You can get somebody like Adam Everett, and undervalued defensive wizard, for cheap.  Settling for somebody who is bad at offense and bad at defense is setting this team up for disaster, without even factoring in the inanity of paying him 2.5 million.  Even if there aren’t any players markedly better than Alex Cora on the market, wouldn’t you rather have Wilson Valdez at the minimum, keeping in mind that Valdez is a plus plus defender who might only suck slightly worse with the bat.  Seems like a no brainer to me.

 

Josh Thole and Catcher Offense

If you comb through prospect chat logs from BA/BP/ESPN/etc., you’ll sometimes see questions asking about the viability of Josh Thole as a starting catcher.  The response is usually something along the lines of, “he doesn’t hit for enough power and the defense isn’t good enough,”  essentially meaning he doesn’t hit well enough to be a catcher in the mold of Mike Napoli/Jorge Posada/Victor Martinez, and his defense isn’t good enough to live with the bat.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to comment on Thole’s chances at becoming an average to good catcher.  I will say that in his incredibly brief time in the majors, he actually ranked right around average. Of course, he clanged some pretty ugly looking passed balls, so there’s a good chance that he’s slightly worse than that.  Then again, he went from zero to somewhat viable in two years, is a fairly good athlete, and is only 22.  So it stands to reason that with some more experience, he could become a solid defensive catcher.

Looking at the chart provided in that link, which I feel is an excellent and thorough attempt at capturing catcher defense, you can see that the best defensive catchers are worth an extra win above average, while the worst defensive catchers cost you about a win (10 runs = a win in standard SABR calculations).  So if Josh Thole was the worst defensive catcher in baseball, he’d have to be worth about 3 wins with his bat to be an average to above average regular.

So, about his bat.  His career line in the minors is .292/.381/.377 for a .758 OPS.  That is factoring in his earlier seasons, before his new approach at the plate. His new approach has yielded a .300/.382/.427 (.809 OPS) season and a .329/.396/.424 (.820 OPS) season. The average line of all catchers in 2009: .254/.320/.395 (.715 OPS).  Of the 29 catchers who got 300 PA, only 7 had an OPS over .800, only 9 had an OPS over .780, and only 13 had an OPS over .749.

Depending on how aggressive you wanted to get with Thole’s offensive projections, it’s quite reasonable to suggest he’d be anywhere within the top half to the top third of catchers.  Now to figure out how valuable that would make his bat.  For a lack of ability in manipulating advanced statistics, I’m going to look at the value of the bat of somebody whose production Thole could reasonably approximate.

Yadier Molina – .293/.366/.383 (.749 OPS/.337 wOBA). That looks like a pretty realistic line for Thole. Not high on slugging, good average, and a strong OBP. Yadier’s bat was worth 5.5 Runs. Factoring in Yadier’s playing time, and without adding in his defense, he was worth 3 wins. If you treated Thole as the worst defensive catcher in baseball and subtracted 1 win from his value, he’d be… a two win player.

Of course, that exercise hinges upon Thole accumulating all of Yadier’s playing time, which was 140 games and 544 plate appearances. But the point I’m trying to make is that if you did treat Thole as a starting catcher and thus gave him the requisite playing time, his bat would make him an above average catcher.

The impact a catcher has on a pitching staff is nebulous. Most traditional baseball people really believe in having a veteran catcher who knows how to call a game. But anyone looking at the AJ Burnett drama can see that there’s probably a huge amount of BS involved in this. In theory, it’d be great to have a grizzled old catcher with a well-defined jaw, covered in a beard that clearly denotes his wisdom pertaining to all things pitching, with the purest of blue eyes that are a constant fountain of confidence for his pitcher. I just don’t think many of these guys exist, and I think veteran catchers get glorified for no particular reason.

I’m not saying I want Josh Thole to be our primary catcher next year. There’s a good chance his bat isn’t ready to reach the level of a Yadier Molina, his defensive deficiencies could impact his confidence, or one of the plethora of other maladies that often befall rookies will occur. What I am saying is that it’s foolish to say that his bat isn’t big enough to be a starting catcher.  Most catchers suck at hitting.  To be an above average hitting catcher, you don’t have to hit for a lot of power.  You just have to get on base a decent amount and have a pulse.  You could say catchers are the insecure drunk girl at a party, and Josh Thole is on the rebound.  Hooray for low standards!

In Defense of Joe Girardi

I love killing managers.  It’s fun.  It’s easy, because most of them are dumb.  Especially when they’re named Jerry Manuel or Jim Tracy.  So when Joe Girardi takes out a reliever after getting two quick outs and goes to another right-handed reliever, and said reliever gives up two hits and loses the game… I don’t think it was a terrible move.

Was it overmanaging?  Absolutely.  Was it strange?  No, it was utterly nonsensical.  It was ridiculous.  But that doesn’t mean it was bad.  A bad move is a move that actively harms your teams chance of winning.  A bad move is leaving in a LOOGY to face a righty.  A bad move is calling for a ridiculous sacrifice with a guy who can barely bunt.

Alfredo Aceves has been very good for the Yankees.  He owns a 3.70 FIP.  He’s pitched well.  Girardi didn’t lift Mariano and put in Jose Veras.  He lifted a guy who, after dealing with arm troubles and throwing 33 (more like 25 with IBB, but still, 25) pitches in his last outing,  was not going to pitch the next inning.

So Girardi lifted Robertson one batter early, for a pretty good pitcher.  After the game, Girardi was quoted as saying he did it because “[The Yankees] have all the matchups and the scouting reports and we felt that it was a better matchup for us.”  If the worst thing your manager does is lift a reliever an out before he’s going to be pulled from the game anyway, because he did research and used his scouting reports, then you should consider yourself lucky.  And as an addendum, Mathis had faced Robertson in Game 2.  He smoked a double.

As for the scouting match-ups, let’s see what Howie Kendrick and Jeff Mathis like to hit:

Howie Kendrick likes to hit every pitch outside of a slider (-6.5).

Jeff Mathis sucks against everything… except for curveballs (.7).

Robertson’s secondary pitch is a curveball.  A curveball that has been worth -4.7 runs.

Now, Aceves doesn’t throw a slider.  But he does throw other pitches aside from his curveball, including a cutter and a change-up.  All of which have been good.  So it does seem likely that scouting reports would dictate that Aceves was a better match-up than Robertson.

The move was weird, strange, nonsensical, odd, vexing, and perplexing.  But is pulling a reliever an out early for a pretty good pitcher, who arguably has better stuff for the situation, BAD?  I don’t think so.

Dan Murphy Battles the Pink (Projection) Robots

Dan Murphy had a terrible 2009, failing to do the one thing he was ‘guaranteed’ to do.  His average and BB% collapsed, and his inability to hit for power was highlighted.  Nobody saw this coming.  Well, except for those damned computer projection systems:

Dan Murphy 2009: .266/.313/.427 – .740 OPS

ZiPS projection: .273/.324/.422 – .746 OPS

CHONE projection: .270/.336/.410 – .746 OPS

PECOTA projection: .263/.327 /.405 – .732 OPS

What you’re seeing here is how the three most accurate projection systems had Dan Murphy’s offensive production completely pegged.  These projection systems do not look at scouting reports, or a player’s swing; the only thing they look at is his raw data.

Murphy’s 2008 was undeniably awesome at every level.  In AA, he hit: .315/.378/.495, for an .873 OPS.  Combined with his domination of MLB pitching, there was a ton to like.  The problem is, before 2008, Murphy had never done much hitting.

In 2007 in A+, he hit .288/.343.430 for a .773 OPS. Gee… that looks familiar.

It’s tough to analyze the development of a hitter with numbers. Things like learning to turn on an inside pitch, or laying off of a specific breaking ball, can be a gradual process that doesn’t come together all at once. This could be true of Murphy, who undeniably got better at hitting the inside fastball and hitting for power (for an excellent study on this, check out this link).  So if he can graft that ability onto the framework he demonstrated in 2008, he might rebound and triumph.

I don’t know what the future holds for Murphy.  He could show modest improvement, he could stay the same, or perhaps he go back to hitting like he did in 2008.  I just wanted to point out the striking accuracy with which his 2009 was predicted, partially to underscore the foolishness most Mets fans (and front office executives) were guilty of for believing in him so readily.

In a strange way, I find some optimism to be gleaned from the pessimistic projections, namely, that they were totally numbers based.  What I mean by this is that it’s not as though the projections were predicated on him having a slow bat, or a lack of talent; things that would usually preclude success.  Instead, they were completely cold and indifferent.  Most scouting reports, including those of Keith Law, believed in Murphy’s bat.  So perhaps it was just too much, too soon for Murphy, and he needed some more time to hone his chops.  It doesn’t appear as though the Mets are interested in bringing in another first basemen to play full-time, as Ike Davis could be approaching MLB-ready status in 2011.  Needless to say, 2010 is a make or break year for Murphy.

Mejia, Walks, and Girl Talk

Update: I asked resident internet ‘injury expert’ Will Carroll the probability that a  strained middle finger could lead to control problems, and he responded with a succinct: “High”

Jenrry Mejia debuted in the Arizona Fall League yesterday and under the watchful eyes of scouts, front office executives, and the Almighty Pitch F/X system, showcased his prodigous talents.  Unfortunately, his appearance was relatively short-lived, as his command was poor and he quickly hit his pitch count due to 3 walks and several long at-bats.

The scouting/Mets community, however, was abuzz, as Mejia hit 98 mph repeatedly with his fastball, and sat comfortably around 95.  He also unleashed several good change-ups, and managed to drop a curveball for a called strike three.

Most people commented that his stuff is amazing, but that he’ll need to clean-up his command/control, which is undeniably true.  However, Mejia had always demonstrated low walk totals throughout his minor league career… until he suffered a strained middle finger.  Since that point, he’s been far less parsimonious with the free passes.

08: 3.18 BB/9.  That’s a good mark.  Slightly better than major league average.

09, by month.

April: 3.66

May: 2.42

June: 2.93

Injury

August: 4.76

Sept: 6.97

Some may attribute the increase in walk total to stepping up to AA, which I’m sure played a part in it, but prior to his injury in 24 AA innings, Mejia had a BB/9 of 3.38.

Clearly I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but I think it’s worth keeping in mind, as prior to his injury, he had never displayed high walk totals.

Hopefully he’s just a young, impressionable 20 year old and heard from the cool kids that “Girls” were into “Walks,” and because of the language barrier, misheard them actually talking about the mash-up maestro known as “Girl Talk.” Somebody get Mejia an iPod, now!

Well That Was Well Timed

A quick tip of the hat to Jim Tracy.  I’ve had a problem on this blog saying something and then having directly controverting evidence be brought to the fore, like when I defended Omar Minaya in the morning and in the afternoon he accused Adam Rubin of lobbying for a job.  That was fun.  So, I’d just like to thank Jim Tracy for being ‘consistent’ last night.

A lot of people were apoplectic about him not going to Beimel to get Howard, but that wasn’t my favorite part.  My favorite part was leading off the ninth inning, when Eyre was brought into the game, he went to Eric Young Jr.  It was so delicious, I almost couldn’t take it.  It was a symphony, like bacon wrapped bacon dipped in bacon flavored BBQ sauce.

Chris Iannetta’s career OPS against lefties: .929. This season: .987.

Eric Young – career at-bats: 65.  Career OPS: .611.  Minor league OPS vs. lefties: .682.  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s the single worst coaching move ever made.  Iannetta KILLS lefties.  And he got no at-bats this series, a series in which the Phillies started lefties every single game, and brought in lefty relievers several times.  Guess who on the Rockies has a better OPS against lefties than Iannetta? NOBODY.

If you watched last night’s game, you were all witnesses to the worst managerial move ever made.  All moves Jerry makes will now be measured against that move.

To demonstrate: Jerry Manuel pinch hitting Omir Santos for Ramon Castro against Matt Lindstrom, with Santos having to run in from the bullpen, rates a 9.0 out of 10.0 on the JTURD (Jim Tracy’s Unquestionably Retarded Decisions) scale.  Also, to casually refer to a bad managing decision, you could say something like, “When Jerry let Feliciano pitch to Matt Diaz, he dropped a pretty big JTURD.”

Thank you Jim Tracy.

Jim Tracy: As Bad As Advertised

When Jim Tracy was hired as the manager of the Rockies, there was a pretty significant outcry from fans of his former teams who did not have fond memories of him.  I’m too lazy to go digging for proof, so you’re going to have to take my word for it.  Not “sucks in the way every manager sucks,” but sucks in a way that only a few precious souls suck, like Jerry.

Of course it takes some stones to suggest that somebody who lead his team into the playoffs after the start the Rockies had is a bad manager.  Or it could just be coincidence, as every one of his star players was underacheiving under Hurdle, and it could’ve been just the fact that he was “notHurdle” as Keith Law suggested.  Much in the same way that Jerry was notWillie.

Last night he had the perfect opportunity to tip the scales in his favor by taking advantage of the Phillies’ bullpen and his array of lefthanded hitting bench bats.  He failed.  Pretty comprehensively.

Chad Durbin traditionally is worse against lefties, though this year he’s been pretty even.  But from 2006-2008, lefties have OPSed .781 against him, as opposed to righties, who OPSed .699.  Moreover, Atkins, Spilborghs, and Barmes all kind of stink against righties.  As in: Atkins has a .559 OPS, Spilborghs has a .668 OPS, and Barmes has a .708 OPS.

On the bench: Stewart (.823 OPS vs. RHP), Hawpe (.955 OPS vs. RHP), and Giambi… who has been terrible against righties this year, but for his career he holds a .965 OPS against them, and he’s also destroyed Durbin in limited engagements, going 6 for 15 off him with 4 walks, 2 homeruns, and 2 doubles.  Yes small sample size, but that’s still a lot of damage.  Also, Chris Iannetta is on the bench, and he has an OPS of .987 against lefties and .929 for his career.

The only lefty that remained in the bullpen for Philadelphia was Bastardo, and inviting him into the game would be welcome, considering you have Iannetta to spring on him.

What did Tracy choose to do?  Nothing.  Three groundouts from Durbin ensued, inning over, opportunity wasted.

As an addendum, Charlie Manuel did something incredibly smart last night.  He used Eyre’s injury as an excuse to use whichever reliever he wanted, and considering the importance of the situation, he went to his best reliever.  Of course, he might’ve just wanted an excuse to save Lidge to close the game, but it was really smart managing to avoid getting beat by the 3/4/5 hitters of the other team with no outs and two on.

Oh, and the fifth hitter was Yorvit Torrealba, who went 0 for 4 with 3 strikeouts and 4 LOB.  He was batting 5th because the game before he hit a homerun.  Nevermind his .728 OPS for the season.  He hit a homerun.  That means he’s super hot and super clutch and ready to rock!  Did I mention Jim Tracy blows?

Joe Magrane: The McGriddle of Stupid

I often get asked what I would call myself/my blog when Jerry gets canned.  Most of the time I just think I’ll keep the name as a testament to the power of positive thinking; a memorial to what one can accomplish with a snarky blog and an overactive twitter account.

However, last night, I had a bit of an epiphany, or at least, a moment of clarity.  I tuned into MLB Tonight on  MLB Network, which unfortunately is getting worse by the day, and was made to pay for my naivete by being bombarded with idiotic ramblings that would make Steve Phillips and Rick Sutcliffe proud.

Barry Larkin praised the Twins for their hitting style, which yielded them all of 3 runs and 17 LOB.  This was after Harold Reynolds questioned Joe Girardi for leaving Hughes in, instead of using Mariano to face Punto, while simultaneously chastising Girardi for bringing Mariano in because closers do worse when they aren’t saving games.  He also said he would’ve saved Mariano for a lead… which was impossible because after the 8th inning, there are no leads that a closer can protect.  Both Barry Larkin and Harold Reynolds set the retardo-bar pretty high, so high that I thought I’d seen the worst.  Enter Joe Magrane.

I previously served Joe Magrane a delicious portion of my pain soup, but have since avoided watching MLB Tonight for fear of suffering an aneurysm.  I got on him in that post for him making an incorrect statement with 100% confidence backed with no evidence, while managing to deliver it in the most condescending and arrogant tone imaginable. Last night, he was asked about how the Twins can have confidence in Joe Nathan.  His response, to paraphrase, was that “he’s fried from always having to protect 1 run leads because the Twins don’t score a lot.”

For such a simple statement, there are so many things to make fun of him for.  This is like the McGriddle of idiocy: one tiny sandwich, 21 grams of fat.  One sentence, plenty of stupid.

1.) He didn’t answer the question.  He was asked about having confidence in a teammate, and he answered by making a nonsensical excuse for Nathan.

2.) The lead he blew was a two run lead.

3.) He’s a closer.  Isn’t that his job?  To protect tight leads?  Do we ever say Mariano is burned out?  Closers, by definition, only come in save situations.

4.) The Twins scored the 5th most runs in MLB.  They have the 7th highest OPS in baseball.  That’s right, Little Ol’ Scrappy McSmallball had a really good offense.  As an aside, they were 18th in MLB in stolen bases, but that doesn’t fit the common narrative.  Twins = no offense, small ball, stolen bases, beards, grit, scrap, couldn’t even spell OPS.

5.) 33 of his 47 saves were multi-run leads. And he blew 2 multi-run leads.  Of his 52 save opportunities, 35 times he was protecting a 2+ run lead.   33% of the time he was protecting a 1 run lead.

One sentence.  5 different ways to call you an idiot.

So, should I decide to retire Fire Jerry Manuel, I can keep the FJM meme alive, thanks to Joe Magrane.  Unfortunately, that’d necessitate my watching MLB Tonight.  So I’d have to weigh the trade off of risking an aneurysm/swallowing my tongue, against calling attention to how dumb somebody is on a cable baseball show.  Clearly, it’d be worth it.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Thanks to Brian Costa for posting the transcript of the Manuel interview.

Why fire Alicea and remove Shines as third-base coach?

“The traffic that we had on the bases probably to a large degree was not managed as well as we would liked to have seen. That was probably the biggest issue with us was the issue of baserunning. We didn’t seem to have that perform at the level we thought we need to to be a championship club.”

Why keep Shines on staff if you were unhappy with the job he did as third-base coach?

“He’s a good baseball man. He’s very, very knowledgeable about baseball. He’s managed at the high development levels. I trust his knowledge of baseball. I trust his enthusiasm, his energy, and his work ethic was tremendous. He worked extremely hard. We just had a lot of different issues at third base that were very noticeable and we just have to make an adjustment with that.”

Razor Shines clearly had to go from third-base.  And it’s not awful that he was kept on the staff; there’s every chance that he can be useful in one capacity and terrible at another.  Though the idea of Jerry judging somebody’s baseball knowledge is absolutely hilarious.  That’s like getting babysitting tips from John Phillips or Roman Polanski.

I’m not sure how Luis Alicea should get blamed for baserunning when he’s the first base coach and almost every mistake happens after they are no longer looking at him.  I don’t remember seeing anyone stop running halfway to first base and then head back to home, though I may be mistaken.

Why keep Warthen as pitching coach, considering the high walks total?

“I was more concerned with the evolution of Mike Pelfrey, John Maine and Oliver Perez. I think at their best — when I’ve seen them in the time that I’ve been here at their best — they’ve been under Dan Warthen. And I think we have to get back to them being their best. I think again, you can be optimistic that Dan and Nemo can handle that because they have done it before.”

This is just mind blowing.  To begin with, this seems to intimate that this decision was up to Jerry.  This may just be a function of bureaucracy or semantics, and Jerry was the mouthpiece for Omar in this instance, but the notion that Jerry was in charge of whether Warthen got canned is nauseating.  Following that up was that he cited the progress of Oliver Perez and Mike Pelfrey as reasons for bringing Warthen back.  They both had abominable seasons and showed absolutely no progress as the year went on.  I’ve gone into detail about Warthen before, so I don’t want to be redundant.  I also don’t think there’s anyone out there who disagrees on this subject either.  This is just pathetic.

Why remove Sandy Sr. as bench coach?

“Well, I thought that defensively, I thought we struggled. I thought we needed to get to another level. A lot has to do with some of the things we were dealing with as far as the makeup of the team. I also thought that there were some guys that I didn’t think were quite doing what they needed to do. I thought at that point it warranted us to make sure that we get the right person or right people in that place.”

I have no problem with firing Sandy, but what does it actually accomplish?

It’s nice to know that after this pathetic season there’s no accountability from the most important people in the organization, but rather scapegoating of ancillary figures whose positions are largely vestigial.  The least important positions of the coaching/management are the ones who took the blame.  Not the guy who preaches being “strong up the middle” and then decided that having Luis Castillo and Alex Cora playing MIF was a good idea.  Not the pitching coach who presided over the staff that issued the 2nd highest amount of walks in baseball, that showed absolutely no progress throughout the course of the year, and was without a single pitcher who could have been considered as overachieving.

Oh, and of course Jerry is back.  The guy who presided over this debacle.  Who was in charge of the coaching staff that he felt was sub par in making sure his team ran the bases properly and played competent defense.  The man whose team made error after error throughout the year, and whose ineptitude knew no limits.

Off to a rollicking start!