General Cubs Chit-Chat

[Derwood]

Maybe the real "Cubs Dynasty" was the friends we made along the way.

 

Waves and waves of friends

[Bertz]

 

Steele got some hype as possibly having become a spin rate monster during quarantine, and looks like the data from his debut is bearing that out

[imb]

those numbers sound real good until you look at the list of complete horsefeathering nobodies he's on

[Cubswin11]

 

Steele got some hype as possibly having become a spin rate monster during quarantine, and looks like the data from his debut is bearing that out

The slider/spin rate plus 95+ he showed out of the pen definitely is intriguing

[Irrelevant Dude]

Add Matt Duffy to the Covid list.

 

[CyHawk_Cub]

[tweet]

[/tweet]

[d_money]

Sounds like they need a new hitting coach

[Rob]

those numbers sound real good until you look at the list of complete horsefeathering nobodies he's on

 

I vote we call them Gombers.

[abuck1220]

starting to think 2016 wasn't the beginning of a dynasty.

[stitchface]

starting to think 2016 wasn't the beginning of a dynasty.

 

 

It was 2015. It lasted two years.

[Hawk4Hall]

Kaycee Sogard deleted her Twitter, it seems, after people found her liked tweets and it turns out she likes being racist as much as she likes being anti-science. So that’s fun.

She’s a dumb [expletive].

[UMFan83]

I hate my favorite team so much

 

[Derwood]

I hate my favorite team so much

 

 

It's too bad it's not 2003 and we could just slip the vaccine into their HGH injections

[Tryptamine]

Trainer gives them supplements, they pop them immediately no questions asked and go about their day, acting surprised later on when they get popped for PEDs. A lifesaving vaccine appears and suddenly they need to be thoroughly educated before they can make an informed decision.

[CyHawk_Cub]

So, maybe an even lower vaccination rate among the players than the U.S. Marines? Cool.

[abuck1220]

I hate my favorite team so much

 

 

how pissed would you be if you were a vaccinated player and some knucklehead staff member was preventing you from getting to do all the stuff the 85% threshold allows you to do?

[Tim]

Mooney has a ridiculous article on the Athletic today.

 

 

He spends the entire article talking about trading Kimbrel, while taking up every third paragraph with the caveat that it is way too early to be talking about the subject. He compares the return the Cubs might be able to get with Gleyber, but then talks about how different the environment is today. Fundamentally, he had a deadline and churned out a completely nothing article that contradicted itself at every turn.

 

Can they just pay Sharma twice as much to write all the Cubs articles?

[Bertz]

Mooney has a ridiculous article on the Athletic today.

 

 

He spends the entire article talking about trading Kimbrel, while taking up every third paragraph with the caveat that it is way too early to be talking about the subject. He compares the return the Cubs might be able to get with Gleyber, but then talks about how different the environment is today. Fundamentally, he had a deadline and churned out a completely nothing article that contradicted itself at every turn.

 

Can they just pay Sharma twice as much to write all the Cubs articles?

 

He's so bad. He's probably the most connected of the beat guys except for Jesse Rogers, but he's a bad writer with a boring point of view.

[Bertz]

I think it's pretty obvious that the issues with the Cubs offense right now are both bad performance and bad luck. I've been curious to see how much is attributable to each though. So I went to Fangraphs, and looked at each hitter's wOBA and their xwOBA. wOBA is a composite stat on the OBP scale, so average should be .320-.330. xwOBA is their expected line based on Statcast estimates from all their batted balls. Here's how the Cubs lineup and top bench guys measure by each (wOBA/xwOBA):

 

Happ - .261/.337

Contreras - .365/.354

Rizzo - .257/.322

Bryant - .392/.353

Joc - .192/.217

Baez - .284/.242

Heyward - .249/.253

Bote - .202/.303

 

Sogard - .171/.229

Duffy - .218/.399

Marisnick - .290/.301

 

So on the one hand, the good news is that the team has been very unlucky. Bryant and Baez have been fairly fortunate, and Contreras has gotten a smidge of good luck, but everyone else has been BABIP'd, several of them quite hard.

 

On the other hand, even if everyone hit based on their Statcast numbers, the offense would still be pretty bad. If you average the main 8's xwOBA's, you get .297, which still sucks. So like the team should be closer to the 20th ranked offense than the 30th, but being 20th is obviously still very much a problem.

[squally1313]

I hate my favorite team so much

 

 

how pissed would you be if you were a vaccinated player and some knucklehead staff member was preventing you from getting to do all the stuff the 85% threshold allows you to do?

 

I think he's saying the majority of the people who are vaccinated are staff people, not the players.

[d_money]

If 85% is the target - 85% of what? MLB roster? 40 man? Including FO?

 

Everyone is throwing around the 85% but no one has figured to ask “85% of what?”

[Andy]

If 85% is the target - 85% of what? MLB roster? 40 man? Including FO?

 

Everyone is throwing around the 85% but no one has figured to ask “85% of what?”

It's 85% of Tier 1 personnel, which includes active roster, coaches and, I think, certain members of the traveling party.

[d_money]

If 85% is the target - 85% of what? MLB roster? 40 man? Including FO?

 

Everyone is throwing around the 85% but no one has figured to ask “85% of what?”

It's 85% of Tier 1 personnel, which includes active roster, coaches and, I think, certain members of the traveling party.

Gotcha - thanks

[Sammy Sofa]

Basically 85% of any given population is the projected ideal percentage to be able to hit, with some degree of confidence, a version of herd immunity thanks to vaccination. So be that business, school, town, state, county, country, etc., etc.; just think that 85% is the ideal. Though anything above 70% is pretty great, and once you get above 75% you're likely going to be set. 85% is the ballpark "magic number" to feel really good about things being about as close as you can get to totally under control without actually hitting 100%.

[champaignchris]

I think it's pretty obvious that the issues with the Cubs offense right now are both bad performance and bad luck. I've been curious to see how much is attributable to each though. So I went to Fangraphs, and looked at each hitter's wOBA and their xwOBA. wOBA is a composite stat on the OBP scale, so average should be .320-.330. xwOBA is their expected line based on Statcast estimates from all their batted balls. Here's how the Cubs lineup and top bench guys measure by each (wOBA/xwOBA):

 

Happ - .261/.337

Contreras - .365/.354

Rizzo - .257/.322

Bryant - .392/.353

Joc - .192/.217

Baez - .284/.242

Heyward - .249/.253

Bote - .202/.303

 

Sogard - .171/.229

Duffy - .218/.399

Marisnick - .290/.301

 

So on the one hand, the good news is that the team has been very unlucky. Bryant and Baez have been fairly fortunate, and Contreras has gotten a smidge of good luck, but everyone else has been BABIP'd, several of them quite hard.

 

On the other hand, even if everyone hit based on their Statcast numbers, the offense would still be pretty bad. If you average the main 8's xwOBA's, you get .297, which still sucks. So like the team should be closer to the 20th ranked offense than the 30th, but being 20th is obviously still very much a problem.

 

It comes down to this for me...

 

Theo declared the offense "broken" nearly 30 months ago and they still have 7 of the 11 top players by Plate Appearances from 2018 on the team. They switched out Schwarber for his statistical clone in Pederson. And they switched out Zobrist, Russell and Almora for the far less talented trio of Sogard, Marsinick and Duffy. And they still have the same hitting coach.

 

This is basically the same group of players that has gone through bizarre extended offensive droughts in each of the previous three seasons, including scoring 1 or 0 runs in 10 of the last 21 games last season.

 

Why are they expecting an improved result?