Castro

[jersey cubs fan]

The Cubs acquiring Hamels would not be boring.

[Guest]

The Cubs acquiring Hamels would not be boring.

 

nah it wouldnt

 

but he's boring

 

BOOOORING

[Sammy Sofa]

Well, they can't all be Dexter Fowler.

[Guest]

To go back to Castro, I thought this was pretty well spoken.

 

@TommyECook (I combined to sentence form for readability)

My idea is basically this: Starlin is very, very, very uncomfortable when he's not swinging often and is inflexible in his approach.

 

So when he came up, his approach was junkball hitter who sprayed singles everywhere. The league slowly adjusted, and then he wasn't seeing nearly as many pitches fitting that approach. He started getting much more hard stuff high and in. Rather than take BBs, he tried to make every pitch he could use that junkball-hitting approach with,striking out a lot and barreling nothing.

 

The Cubs got him to adjust to a pull-heavy, power swing approach that worked very well, and he laid off low/away while punishing strikes in. The league figured out and he's seeing (last I checked) very few pitches on inner 3rd or up. Most of his hits coming on mistakes there. Again, though, rather than take his walks and wait for pitches to hit, Starlin is too uncomfortable with not-swinging to do that. He's using his "pull inside pitches" approach on everything now cause he's too inflexible. Same thing happened before with older approach

 

It's weird for a dude with a legitimately very strong hit tool to go to the plate with a defined idea of what they're doing every PA. But that's who he is and unless he can develop a much more dynamic mindset he's always liable to fall into long, frustrating slumps.

 

I hesitate to call this square-peg-round-hole problem "stubbornness" cause that implies moral failing. Hitting is just really difficult. This is like, something you crush guys for in A Ball. "Oh looks like Difo decided he's gonna hit a bomb this at bat, look at tht huge whiff". But here's Starlin, a very accomplished major league hitter doing the same. So strange to watch. If Starlin ever does figure out how to mesh junkball-hitting and pouncing on inside pitches, he's gonna hit like .290/.340/.475

 

Anyway, this concludes my lukewarm Starlin take. Hope he figures it out

[Guest]

As far as 'what do you do with the infield', I think the answer is pretty obvious, you continue to play Castro. Yes, Baez looks like he's making some improvement, but he's still an extreme risk to crap out again at the MLB level. Until Castro continues to struggle for another 6 weeks or so(remember, for as frustrating as May has been, 4 weeks ago his line was .333/.356/.414/.769) and Baez continues to make strides during that time, I don't think you can reasonably expect there to be a huge gap in their rest of season performance. In the absence of Baez there's no immediate reason to trade Castro, and the Cubs can still make improvements to the team at the deadline without dealing Castro or Baez so there's no real urgency there either.

[Sammy Sofa]

Sounds about right; the broadly summarized reasoning behind his previous bad year was that the Cubs tried to make him a more patient hitter and it was just so at odds with his approach that it was a disaster. He's just a "too naturally" an aggressive hitter; he can't even be patient when the opportunity to be so is practically starting him in the face.

 

Very frustrating.

[sontensei]

So soo true

 

http://espn.go.com/blog/chicago/cubs/post/_/id/31081/russells-error-is-costly-but-castro-hears-the-boos

[Guest]

nah it wouldnt

 

but he's boring

 

BOOOORING

Lol. I'll take him. Castro is putting me to sleep with those choppers to short and third.

Edited May 28, 2015 by Stannis

[jersey cubs fan]

sulley please stop quoting stuff

[Guest]

Sorry.

 

But if Castro is going to hit like Andrelton Simmons, he better be fielding like him too.

 

Otherwise he has no value and should run the risk of simply being benched for Baez.

[Guest]

When you've benched him for Baez, you will be lucky to get Mark Hammill for him.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

When you've benched him for Baez, you will be lucky to get Mark Hammill for him.

Come on, Dorothy Hamill was clearly the way to go.

[Guest]

When you've benched him for Baez, you will be lucky to get Mark Hammill for him.

Come on, Dorothy Hamill was clearly the way to go.

 

A little too over-the-top.

 

There, Tim, i'm using the damn mobile site now.

[Guest]

When you've benched him for Baez, you will be lucky to get Mark Hammill for him.

Come on, Dorothy Hamill was clearly the way to go.

 

A little too over-the-top.

 

There, Tim, i'm using the damn mobile site now.

THANK YOU

[minnesotacubsfan]

I, however, will not give up my precious tapatalk

[Guest]

I, however, will not give up my precious tapatalk

Nor do you have to. Just fix the quotes before posting.

[Guest]

I'm a big fan of Tommy's takes for the most part. That was spot on.

[Sammy Sofa]

Let's think happy thoughts.

 

Over the last 28 days:

 

.229 .272 .323 .595 with a .260 BABIP. Blah.

 

The last 2 weeks:

 

.261 .292 .348 .639 with a .282 BABIP. Better...

 

The last week:

 

.267 .353 .467 .820 with a .250 BABIP (and not counting tonight).

 

Teeny-tiny sample size's worth of hope, but hey, that's what hope is for.

[ARCubsFan]

Wonder how much the 2 intentional walks had to do with that high OBP

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Wonder how much the 2 intentional walks had to do with that high OBP

Should be pretty easy for you to figure out, this isn't rocket surgery.

[North]

Castro has sucked this year. I was more concerned in 2013, though. He couldn't hit fastballs then. His 2015 issues are much different than before. I think he can fix them still, but it's going to take some adjustments.

 

This is interesting. http://cubsrelated.blogspot.com/2015/06/though-cubs-miss-2014-castro-2015.html

[biittner77]

Wonder how much the 2 intentional walks had to do with that high OBP

Should be pretty easy for you to figure out, this isn't rocket surgery.

 

Looks like somebody clicked on the Snorg Tees link. Tim thanks you, I'm sure.

[RammyFanny]

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[CyHawk_Cub]

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Maybe I'm just having a bad day, but in the midst of snarking bad spellers, is he saying they shouldn't trade Castro because he had a hot month last August? 2013 happened, as did the rest of 2014... I'm likely missing some nuanced point here.

[RammyFanny]

He's saying that that Starlin had a worse 36 game stretch last year compared to the current slump he's in, and many people would consider last season a successful one for him.

 

The point is, he gets hot and cold a lot. He started this season scorching hot hitting .333 for the first month (which a lot of people seemingly forget) and then he went through a bad May hitting in the .220's. He's shown a history of being extremely streaky, so let's not jump off a cliff and overreact when he has a bad month. It's obviously not encouraging, but he has a history of having terrible stretches and then going on tears.

 

The spelling error was intentional (for sarcasm), btw.