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Preview of A-League Round 11 matches (all times AEDT):FRIDAY, Dec 16Newcastle Jets v Adelaide United at McDonald Jones Stadium 7.50pmHead to head: Jets 10 Adelaide 14 drawn 11Last clash: Round 1 2016-2017 - Jets 1 drew Adelaide 1 at McDonald Jones StadiumTab Sportsbet: Jets $2.60 Adelaide $2.45 Draw $3.50The Jets are seeking consecutive wins after a gutsy away victory in Perth last start - and Adelaide are ripe for the picking. The Reds, bottom with just one win, were hammered 4-0 by Brisbane last Sunday and their leaky defence compounds a struggling attack - they have scored just nine goals this season. If Newcastle can dim the influence of Adelaides midfield linchpins Marcelo Carrusca and Isaias, who returns from suspension, they may find themselves in the top six come the final whistle.Key: Can Adelaide frontman Sergi Guardiola find the net? The Spaniards class is obvious but he appears unsettled by the overtly-physical attention hes copping from rivals.Tip: DrawSATURDAY, Dec 17Wellington Phoenix v Western Sydney Wanderers at Mt Smart Stadium 5.35pmHead to head: Phoenix 5 Western Sydney 5 drawn 2Last clash: Round 27 2015-2016 - Western Sydney 2 bt Phoenix 0 at Westpac StadiumTab Sportsbet: Phoenix $2.60 Western Sydney $2.50 Draw $3.50Wellington have won a game more than Western Sydney yet sit two spots lower on the table, in part due to having played one less fixture. Ernie Merricks resignation appeared to spur a mini Phoenix revival as the previously stagnating side beat Central Coast 3-0. The Wanderers were on the other end of the same scoreline against Melbourne Victory and need three points to kick-start a frustrating campaign and ensure theyre not spat out of the top six. Kerem Bulut is back in the squad but with no guarantees coach Tony Popovic will keep him there.Key: Whether Brendon Santalab has his eye in this week after missing a series of chances against Victory.Tip: DrawMelbourne City v Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park 7.50pmHead to head: Melbourne City 7 Melbourne Victory 8 drawn 5Last clash: Round 2 2016-2017 - Melbourne City 4 bt Melbourne Victory 1 at Etihad StadiumTab Sportsbet: Melbourne City $2.15 Melbourne Victory $3.10 Draw $3.50Simmering animosities, super talents and two teams in red-hot form: the third edition of the Melbourne derby this season already has the makings of yet another belter. In all matches City are unbeaten in five, Victory in four, but John van t Schip must think he has the measure of their rivals after 4-1 and 2-0 defeats in the last two months. Will Tim Cahill start? Unlikely but City have enough attacking firepower without him. Kevin Muscat has a few options available to him in the front third as well, not least Besart Berisha, who will tie the all-time A-League scorers list with a goal in the AAMI Park Christmas classic.Key: Marco Rojas. The player of the month has been irrepressible this season and much could depend on how fit he is after missing last week with a hamstring issue.Tip: DrawPerth Glory v Sydney FC at nib Stadium 10.00pmHead to head: Glory 8 Sydney 17 drawn 9Last clash: Round 6 2016-2017 - Sydney 4 bt Glory 1 at Allianz StadiumTab Sportsbet: Glory $3.25 Sydney $2.05 Draw $3.50Glory players were booed off the pitch by their own fans during last weeks shock 2-1 loss to Newcastle. It was by far Glorys worst display at home this season, and they cant afford to put in another dire effort against an unbeaten Sydney outfit that is brimming with confidence. The continual absence of playmaker Diego Castro has hurt Glory, but theyve still got enough talent to turn their season around. The Sky Blues are cruising six points clear at the top of the table. The absence of suspended duo Josh Brillante and Matt Simon could test Sydneys depth this week, but theyll still fancy their chances of snaring all three points in Perth.Key: Attacking firepower. Glory have leaked goals this season. Can they score enough at the other end to make up for their defensive frailties?Tip: SydneySUNDAY, Dec 18Central Coast Mariners v Brisbane Roar at Central Coast Stadium 5.00pmHead to head: Mariners 7 Brisbane 24 drawn 10Last clash: Round 3 2016-2017 - Brisbane 1 bt Mariners 0 at Central Coast StadiumTab Sportsbet: Mariners $4.25 Brisbane $1.70 Draw $4.00After four frustrating draws in a row, Brisbane roared back into form with a 4-0 shellacking of struggling Adelaide last week - a performance that should have the Mariners worried. The experienced Nick Montgomery and Jacques Faty return, but Michael Tavares is still sidelined, meaning Central Coasts young midfield brigade has a huge task on their hands to dull the influence of Roar import Thomas Kristensen, skipper Matt McKay and playmaker Dimi Petratos. Goalkeeper Michael Theo is back for Brisbane after a week off through injury.Key: Faty needs to take command of his backline against a Roar side with an increasingly lethal counter-attacking game.Tip: Brisbane Green Bay Packers Store . They had already blown a double-digit lead, fans were hitting the exits, and a long seven-game road trip waited at the end. Packers Jerseys 2021 . And when it opened, every player was at his stall. Thats a sure sign that a team is in a slump and is searching for answers. "Its embarrassing to be at home and play the way we did," said defenceman Josh Gorges. https://www.packersjerseysale.com/ . -- Anaheim Ducks captain and leading scorer Ryan Getzlaf has been scratched from Sunday nights game against the Vancouver Canucks because of an upper-body injury. Green Bay Packers Shirts . The phone hearing is scheduled for 4:30pm et/1:30pm pt. Winchester, who was not penalized for the hit, appeared to make contact with Kellys head early in the first period of Thursdays game in Boston. Fake Packers Jerseys . Andrew Luck lost his favourite target and the Indianapolis locker room lost one of its most revered leaders when Reggie Wayne was diagnosed Monday with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee that will cost him the rest of the season. Players have good years, bad years and in-between years, and in 2016 Chris Davis had an in-between year. He was a productive major leaguer, worth a lineup spot on a good team. But he will most likely be named on no MVP ballots this week, after finishing 14th in voting a year ago and third two years before that. Taken together its all OK, except that Davis was playing the first year under a $161 million contract that will almost assuredly take him into that phase of his career where theyre eventually all bad (and expensive) years. The Baltimore Orioles needed this one to be good.As teams prepare this month to sign players to new $161 million contracts (or thereabouts), its worth looking at what makes for an in-between season. In one sense, Davis drop-off from 2015 to 2016 is remarkable: By OPS+, Davis (at 107) was more similar to Erick Aybar (at 69) than he was to the 2015 version of himself (147). In another sense, the margins between superstar and expensive, average player are slim enough to straddle.To appreciate this, dont think of a season as a single product, built in a factory somewhere and rolled out to the marketplace in its final form. It is a series of hundreds of individual events, each one with the potential to be good, bad or in-between. Consider it, in fact, like this:Thats what were calling Chris Daviss 2015 season, his good season. Thats the jar of dry black beans, unpopped popcorn, gummy fish, gummy half-fish, mini marshmallows, knockoff M&Ms, semi-sweetened chocolate chips and unshelled pistachios that were going to literally unpack today.Within that jar are the 47 gummy fish, 31 halved gummy fish, 66 knockoff M&Ms, 84 marshmallows and eight chocolate chips that Davis delivered in 2015. These are all delicious treats, and they are all excellent outcomes for a hitter. Within that jar are also 208 uncooked black beans, 214 unpopped corn kernels, and six pistachios. These are bad outcomes for a hitter, and no matter how many home runs a major leaguer can realistically hit, hes going to fill the spaces in between with outs. As Chris Davis did.So Davis went from a near-MVP season to a merely OK season, but not everything changed. For instance, he was hit by exactly as many pitches in both years, so the Orioles got just as many chocolate chips as they might have expected. He grounded into exactly as many double plays, so the Orioles got just as many of those as they have expected. If the Orioles were paying Davis to get hit by pitches, and avoid double plays -- and, in some fractional way, they were -- they would have considered him just as good in 2016 as in 2015. Since HBPs and GIDPs were a wash, lets remove those 14 outcomes from the season, because to the extent that Davis failed to repeat his excellent 2015 season, it happened in the other 650-plus outcomes.Our new jar, free of pistachios and chocolate chips:He drew four more walks in 2016, so to the extent the Orioles were paying him to walk (and they were) they got more than their moneys worth. He had six fewer singles, so to the extent they were paying him to single (and they were), they almost got their moneys worth. Davis repeated all of the walks and most of the singles, so remove all of the walks from the marshmallows, and all but six of the knockoff M&Ms.He hit 38 homers in 2016, down from 47 in 2015. He doubled 21 times, down from 31. So if the Orioles expected him to hit 78 extra-base hits, he lived up to that promise in 59 of 78 instances. Those 19 missing extra-base hits were, more or less, cleanly replaced by 11 extra strikeouts and five extra outs on balls in play. (He also batted five fewer times.)What got lost in the move remains in the jar; thats the 2015 production that Davis couldnt match. What he replaced it with is in the glass, on the right. Were talking about 20 plate appearances that shifted from positive outcomes to negative, fewer than one bad outcome per week. The overwhelming majority of his nearly 700 plate appearances stayed the same.This is not to diminish the value of those 20 plate appearances. Switching a home run to an out costs a team, on average, more than a run and a half. Switching a double to an out is roughly a run lost, and a single to an out is almost three-quarters of a run. The jar on the left is worth about 25 runs more to the Orioles, or about two and a half wins, which teams are willing to pay around $20 million or more for. This is why Davis wont sniff an MVP vote this year, and its why Davis gets lumped in with the regrettable signings from last winter.It does, though, stress how little has to actually change for a hitter to go from great to good, or good to bad, or valuable to albatross. That even in big samples, a small subsample can swing everything, for Davis or for any other hitter.You might wonder where those nine homers, 10 doubles and two singles went, and here again we can see how little has to be different for a lot to be different.ddddddddddddFrom the time that the ball was pitched to the moment it was hit, heres what changed for Davis; a bunch of other things stayed more or less the same, and wont be mentioned:Pitchers threw slightly more pitches in the strike zone -- about 45 out of every 100, up from 43 of 100.Davis was much more patient. He swung about five fewer times per 100 pitches seen, a patience that showed up both at pitches in the strike zone and out of the strike zone. He went from the top 40 percent of free-swingers, in 2015, to the bottom 20 percent in 2016. (This probably explains the modest uptick in both walks and strikeouts, as he worked deeper counts.)More teams shifted against him, though not that many more -- he was already shifted by almost everybody. Still, he hit 127 ground balls against an extreme shift in 2016, up from 113 in 2015 (and 96 the year before that). This cost him a single or so.Finally, the direction the ball went changed dramatically. Davis pulled 55 percent of the balls he put in play in 2015, which was the fourth-highest pull rate among all qualifying hitters. He pulled just under 42 percent of balls he put in play in 2016, which is the 62nd-highest pull rate. That was the biggest change in pull rate in the majors this year, by a lot:This last bit seems, at first glance, like a major change. And considering how much more power most hitters have when they pull the ball -- the league as a whole slugged .665 on pulled balls this year, .541 on balls hit to center, and just .495 on balls hit the other way -- it seems like the answer for the missing homers and doubles.But, in fact, it explains nothing for Davis, who has had extraordinary power to all fields in his career:His slugging percentage to the opposite field over the past five years is the best mark in baseball by more than 65 points. Hitting more balls to left or center isnt necessarily a bug for Davis, and in 2016 especially it worked to his benefit: He slugged .975 on balls hit the other way, more than 100 points better than any other hitter in baseball. He slugged .795 on balls hit to center, fifth best in baseball, two points behind Mike Trout.So it wasnt his inability to pull the ball that cost him power. However, it was his inability to pull the ball for power that cost him power. He slugged only .586 when he pulled the ball, his worst power performance on pulled baseballs since 2011, a season he began in Texas. In fact, here is where we find all the missing extra-base hits, and more:This despite the fact that his exit velocity on pulled baseballs was, at 91.3 mph, almost identical to his 2015 figure (91.6 mph). His exit velocity on pulled line drives went up, from 97.2 mph to 98.7 mph -- and yet his doubles on pulled liners dropped from 16 to five, and homers from five to two. His average exit velocity on pulled fly balls went up, from 95.7 mph to 99.1, and his average distance on pulled fly balls dropped only from 346 feet to 344; and yet his home runs on pulled fly balls dropped in half, from 22 to 11. Sometimes the park just holds you. Sometimes the defense is just a little bit better.One might still take all these facts and conclude that Davis is in serious and irrevocable decline. Most ballplayers older than 30 are in irrevocable decline, after all, and everything weve noted was different about Davis this year might be used to build in a circumstantial case against him: Pitchers threw him more strikes because they (and their advance scouts) already intuit that he isnt as dangerous as he used to be, maybe. He took more pitches because he realizes that, as he ages, he cant handle as many quality pitches on the edges of the zone, maybe. He pulled fewer pitches because his bat is slower, maybe. He did less damage when he did pull it because hes not as strong, maybe. He dealt with hand soreness throughout the season and said himself that I havent been myself all season. His hand kept him from turning the bat over, maybe, or from getting backspin, maybe. Anyway, he struck out more and he hit less. You dont need a jar full of gummy fish to understand that this is what happens to ballplayers sometime after they turn 30.But we, as analysts and baseball fans and GMs signing free agents, miss on veterans almost as often as we miss on young players, because the unknowns about player performance dont go away, they just shift a little. Almost everything Chris Davis did this year was as good as it had been the year before. In a small sliver of his outcomes, sent to just one sliver of the field, everything he hit turned into nothing -- and for no clear or convincing reason. This is one way that a season ends up in the in-between, and its one way that we are overeager to declare a contract sunk 14.3 percent of the way into it. ' ' '