General Cubs Chit-Chat

[Bryants Disco Ball]

From a personal standpoint I'm really worried about the level of my fandom. Zero chance that in the last 20 years I'd have read about a player making the Opening Day roster for my team and not even know who that person is.

 

I've literally never heard of P.J. Higgins until reading that tweet. I also realized that I recognize the last names of some of the bullpen candidates but had zero clue what their first name is. That Magill guy, for example. I'd say it's Miguel but zero chance I'd bet money on it.

 

Any way, thanks for listening.

[Bertz]

 

This team is placing a lot of faith in Tommy Hottovy. A lot.

[Derwood]

That is not a big market pitching staff. Yikes

[CoolHandLuke]

I'd like the rotation quite a bit if only they had some way to get an ace to push everyone down a slot... Impossible to just find cy young contenders though...

[Derwood]

I'd like the rotation quite a bit if only they had some way to get an ace to push everyone down a slot... Impossible to just find cy young contenders though...

 

I hear San Diego has one we might be interested in...

[Backtobanks]

 

This team is placing a lot of faith in Tommy Hottovy. A lot.

 

With Romine as the backup catcher, that bench is pretty pathetic offensively too.

[Rob]

I always used to get so mad when playing games like MVP Baseball 2005. The computer GM in franchise modes would make the weirdest moves like trading an ace pitcher for a bunch of nobodies, and then bring on some retread old dude who barely deserves to be in baseball anymore. In fact, those were the only players available -- retreads and nobodies. No real GM would ever try to fill out a championship team like that.

 

It was so frustrating, having a GM like that.

[CubinNY]

This Cubs reliever roster looks like it has the potential for Ross to leave in starters too long. He doesn't need another reason to do that. Also, the Cubs are going to go long stretches where they are not scoring runs.

[Bertz]

 

This team is placing a lot of faith in Tommy Hottovy. A lot.

 

With Romine as the backup catcher, that bench is pretty pathetic offensively too.

 

Yeah, I actually do have faith in Hottovy and do see what they're aiming for with each of the guys they brought in. Like Luke said I wish we still had Darvish to anchor things, but I actually like what they're doing, even if it is pretty risky.

 

The bench though, yikes. Within a month I imagine we'll see Maybin come up for the 9th reliever. That will help. Within two months Nico will come up for Sogard or Duffy, that'll help more. But even then it'll be....fine, maybe? Gone are the days where we always had a Happ, Soler, or Baez on the bench.

[Bertz]

 

4. The Cubs rotation will give up the fewest runs in the NL Central.

 

Pitching is a combination of stuff and command, right? The idea behind Command+ is that we can tease out who does what they intend to do with the ball. The idea behind Ethan Moore’s Quality of Stuff is that we can tease out which pitches do well based on velocity and movement characteristics. Put them together, and you should be able to judge a good pitcher, hopefully. Obviously, there’s deception, and injury, and chaos, but command and stuff are fundamental building blocks of pitching.

 

Last year, starting pitchers who had above-average command and stuff collectively had a 3.57 ERA. Pitchers who were below average in both collectively had a 6.08 ERA (and got half as many innings handed to them, in a related matter). At the very least, these two stats are capturing something that’s good for a pitcher. And look what happens when you look at which starting rotations have the best command and stuff going into this year!

 

 

TEAM    COMMAND+   QOS+   AVERAGE
Twins    107.7    107.3   107.5
Cubs     109.2    103.8   106.5
Mets      99.0    108.2   103.6
Phillies 106.0     99.9   102.9
Astros   100.3    105.3   102.8

 

Maybe this wasn’t so much of a surprise, since Cubs R&D analyst Jeremy Greenhouse was one of the first people to publicly tackle stuff research so many years ago. And though the Cubs rotation may collectively average 89 mph on the fastball, Moore’s research found that vertical movement was more important than velocity.

 

Velocity was still second-most important, though, and most of baseball has bet on it, as average fastball speeds have risen from the high 80s to the current near-94 mph average in the last 20 years. This might be the boldest prediction in the list — the Cubs currently have the third-worst rotation in baseball by FanGraphs depth charts. Will be fascinating to see what a bet against velocity looks like, though!

[Ding Dong Johnson]

[tweet]

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4. The Cubs rotation will give up the fewest runs in the NL Central.

[jersey cubs fan]

Bold!

[Sammy Sofa]

[Backtobanks]

[tweet]

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4. The Cubs rotation will give up the fewest runs in the NL Central.

 

Unfortunately, it may balance out with a poor offensive showing.

[Cubswin11]

[tweet]

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4. The Cubs rotation will give up the fewest runs in the NL Central.

 

Unfortunately, it may balance out with a poor offensive showing.

The offense may be annoying and has its flaws that we all know of but I don’t think we should expect the overall offensive production to be bad or something that hurts the team. I expect very solid offense and top ~8 or so in the league, think this core has been roughly there every year since 2015 and there’s no real reason to think they won’t roughly be there again despite the flaws/slumps/annoyances. At least until they potentially start selling off and/or get hit by a lot of injuries.

[NOLA]

FFS.

 

[WrigleyField 22]

FFS.

 

Possible political reasons for that answer aside, the existence of the MLB Player Union actually probably makes that a practical response, they would fail to force it on a player.

[Sammy Sofa]

Yes, but horsefeathers the choice of anyone who doesn't want to have to work around someone who simply decided to not get the vaccine.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Having paid zero attention to the Cubs all offseason is making it easier to be a little excited about Opening Day tomorrow. Time to find out who is on this turd of a team.

[Thurman Merman]

Having paid zero attention to the Cubs all offseason is making it easier to be a little excited about Opening Day tomorrow. Time to find out who is on this turd of a team.

Wait, it's tomorrow? I guess I was timing opening day by when a game thread would go up, and just assumed since none was up that they weren't starting for a while.

[Sammy Sofa]

Having paid zero attention to the Cubs all offseason is making it easier to be a little excited about Opening Day tomorrow. Time to find out who is on this turd of a team.

Wait, it's tomorrow? I guess I was timing opening day by when a game thread would go up, and just assumed since none was up that they weren't starting for a while.

 

[Hairyducked Idiot]

oh no why isn't darvish starting? Is he hurt or are we just giving the nod to Hendricks out of respect?

[David]

nsfw

 

[jersey cubs fan]

Who is Jack?

[Cubswin11]