General Cubs Chit-Chat

[UMFan83]

Obviously its only 5 games but Happ is starting the season off well (7-16 with 3 XBH and 7 BB).  Have to wonder if the Cubs are going to regret not extending him. get that he'll be 29 when he heads into FA and I have no idea what Happ was asking for compared to what Jed was offering, but it would suck to have to deal Happ or lose him for nothing.  I could be way off but I just don't see Jed letting Happ get to FA and then resigning him in the open market.

[stitchface]

On 4/3/2023 at 6:44 PM, Hairyducked Idiot said:

And I criticized the plan from day 1.

 

In fact, most of this board criticized the plan up until day 1.  A gut rebuild was a wildly unpopular idea here all the way up to the 2011 offseason.

Just for the record, this is me predicting we will have another gut rebuild by 2033.

Frankly, I'll take a second rebuild for the world series. The flame out of that team's stars was a bit unpredictable. Sustained success without a world series isn't really that great when your team hasn't won one in your lifetime

[Irrelevant Dude]

2 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

Obviously its only 5 games but Happ is starting the season off well (7-16 with 3 XBH and 7 BB).  Have to wonder if the Cubs are going to regret not extending him. get that he'll be 29 when he heads into FA and I have no idea what Happ was asking for compared to what Jed was offering, but it would suck to have to deal Happ or lose him for nothing.

Regardless of what the Cubs can get in return for Happ, I think there are better ways to spend his money in 2024 and beyond.  If he played a different position, I would likely think otherwise, but I struggle with the idea of a huge commitment to a near-30 year old left fielder with average to below average power.

[UMFan83]

6 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

Regardless of what the Cubs can get in return for Happ, I think there are better ways to spend his money in 2024 and beyond.  If he played a different position, I would likely think otherwise, but I struggle with the idea of a huge commitment to a near-30 year old left fielder with average to below average power.

Just hate losing good homegrown offensive players every year.  It would be the 4th year in a row (Schwarber after 2020, Rizzo/Javy/Bryant during 2021, Contreras after 2022).   I realize this is more of an emotional response than a pragmatic one though.  

[Hairyducked Idiot]

5 hours ago, stitchface said:

Frankly, I'll take a second rebuild for the world series. The flame out of that team's stars was a bit unpredictable. Sustained success without a world series isn't really that great when your team hasn't won one in your lifetime

Sure.  But we all agreed that winning in the playoffs was mostly luck.

[CubinNY]

7 hours ago, Hairyducked Idiot said:

Sure.  But we all agreed that winning in the playoffs was mostly luck.

Who are we? Luck favors the prepared. 

[squally1313]

1 hour ago, CubinNY said:

Who are we? Luck favors the prepared sustainably successful. 

Fixed

[Bertz]

I was gonna try and wait at least through the Texas series before diving into this, but this bears watching.  With his power, going from horrendous contact to even just pretty bad would probably be enough to lift him from fringey starter to quality 1st division type.

 

[fromthestretch]

3 minutes ago, Bertz said:

I was gonna try and wait at least through the Texas series before diving into this, but this bears watching.  With his power, going from horrendous contact to even just pretty bad would probably be enough to lift him from fringey starter to quality 1st division type.

 

It is obviously very early in the season, but he's seeing fewer pitches per plate appearance so far. I wonder if it's a conscious effort to try to put the bat on the ball earlier in the count or just an early-season anomaly. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

He also didn't face Woodruff, wasn't going to face Greene, and managed to avoid the best of the Brewers pen.

[CubinNY]

12 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

He also didn't face Woodruff, wasn't going to face Greene, and managed to avoid the best of the Brewers pen.

I absolutely think this is a case of the Cubs consciously putting him in the best matchups for him to succeed. 

[stitchface]

11 hours ago, Hairyducked Idiot said:

Sure.  But we all agreed that winning in the playoffs was mostly luck.

There is a lot of luck involved but better players are still more likely to win than not as good players.

[UMFan83]

1 hour ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

He also didn't face Woodruff, wasn't going to face Greene, and managed to avoid the best of the Brewers pen.

Why won't you let us dream of an age 31 breakout year for Wisdom?

[Transmogrified Tiger]

2 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Why won't you let us dream of an age 31 breakout year for Wisdom?

He didn't strike out against Burnes!

[stitchface]

1 hour ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

He didn't strike out against Burnes!

what were sammy's contact rate changes in april and may 1998? IIRC, he was hitting over .300 but the home runs didn't really explode until June (20!). 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

A couple interesting quotes about Morel from today's Athletic piece:

 

Quote

“We want to bring him up to play a lot,” Hoyer said. “Now he might not play one position all the time, but we don’t see him as a bench player. We see him as a guy that can move all over and do a lot of things. It didn’t appear that those at-bats would be there for him early in the season. The coaching staff was really — I don’t want to say insistent — but they felt strongly that he’s a really good player and we really want him playing a lot. Having him as a bench option isn’t the right thing for his career, and probably not the right thing for the length of the season.”

(snip)

“What’s best for us — and for him long-term — is just consistent at-bats,” Ross said. “I thought we might be doing him a disservice by bringing him off the bench and he’s got some areas he has to improve. He really put himself on the map last year. But that’s a representation of the depth that we have — sending guys down that are very talented. He’ll get off to a great start down in Triple A and be somebody that we’ll be able to call on real soon if something were to come up.”

You could infer a couple things based on that

• If Hosmer doesn't hit, then Morel is just as much a candidate to replace him as Mervis, since they can play Morel all over with an emphasis on his home position(3B) while Wisdom and Rios soak up 1B at bats
• They are worried about the balance of offensive profiles and having Morel, Wisdom, and Rios all in the running for similar playing time is redundant/exploitable.  This may also be why Madrigal got a spot over Morel

[Bertz]

 

Probably puts both guys back in Chicago during the Mariners series, definitely before the Dodgers.

[champaignchris]

39 minutes ago, Bertz said:

 

Probably puts both guys back in Chicago during the Mariners series, definitely before the Dodgers.

Who heads out?  Torrens and Merryweather?

[Bertz]

6 minutes ago, champaignchris said:

Who heads out?  Torrens and Merryweather?

Neither has options, I'd assume Rucker and Madrigal.  Maybe Assad on the pitching side now that Keegan's right

[Brock Beauchamp]

On 4/5/2023 at 7:58 PM, UMFan83 said:

Just hate losing good homegrown offensive players every year.  It would be the 4th year in a row (Schwarber after 2020, Rizzo/Javy/Bryant during 2021, Contreras after 2022).   I realize this is more of an emotional response than a pragmatic one though.  

Pragmatism should always be tempered with fandom, and vice versa.

And let's face it, watching the same players is just more fun than constantly cheering only laundry. Not every decision should be maximized for pure performance, as this is a spectator sport. The spectators and their experience matters, too.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

You have to risk the Torrens outright, we can't keep going with 3 non-offensive catchers and 2 1B/DH*, it's madness.

 

*Yes Mancini can technically play the OF, but 1) he shouldn't and 2) that flexibility doesn't mean much when both corner OF are also strong RHH and Wisdom can do it better.

[Irrelevant Dude]

On 4/2/2023 at 10:11 PM, Irrelevant Dude said:

I was out of town for the first series and got to listen to a lot of the radio broadcasts while in the car.  The Cubs being sponsored by Northshore Adult Diapers and reading that ad multiple times per game feels like something straight out of Major League.

I was at the game last night with my older son and received the following text message from my wife, who had turned the Cubs game on the radio in our 5 year old son's room while getting him ready for bed:

Son (unprompted after hearing the Nortshore ad): "Adults wear diapers?"
Wife: "Yeah, some do."
Son: *Laughing* "Do you think there's anyone at the Cubs game wearing a diaper?"

[Ding Dong Johnson]

4 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

I was at the game last night with my older son and received the following text message from my wife, who had turned the Cubs game on the radio in our 5 year old son's room while getting him ready for bed:

Son (unprompted after hearing the Nortshore ad): "Adults wear diapers?"
Wife: "Yeah, some do."
Son: *Laughing* "Do you think there's anyone at the Cubs game wearing a diaper?"

[UMFan83]

Hey Hosmer is off to a solid start!  Ermm...maybe not so far

https://www.bleachernation.com/cubs/2023/04/14/eric-hosmers-start-hasnt-really-been-as-good-as-it-looks/

Quote

• Last season, Eric Hosmer’s 56.8% groundball rate was the third highest in MLB (min. 400 PAs). So far this season, it’s 64%.

• Last season, Eric Hosmer’s 3.1 degree launch angle was fourth lowest in MLB. This season, it’s -1.2 degrees.

But he was at least making some hard contact before coming to the Cubs. He was still below average in that regard, but this season, so far, Hosmer’s 32 hard% is ten percentage points below his career average (42%) and far below his peaks from 2019-2021 (46-47%). He has also yet to barrel a ball and is carrying an unsustainable .360 BABIP (especially considering his speed).

Because of all that, Statcast has his expected batting average (.198), SLG (.238, bottom 3%), and wOBA (.246, bottom 9%) among the worst in baseball.

More

 

Quote

While Hosmer hasn’t been striking out a TON (21.6% is fine). His plate discipline has been down pretty much across the board (career numbers in parentheses).

Out-of-zone swing%: 40.7 (33.9)
In-zone swing%: 65.7 (68.7)
Out-of-zone contact%: 80.0 (66.6)
Zone contact%: 84.1 (88.2)
First pitch strike%: 73 (57.1)
Called strikes + whiff%: 26.6 (25.2)

 

Sorry for the weird quote boxes, I have no idea how to easily quote different chunks of text without making it look weird.  Kind of frustrating

[David]

18 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

Hey Hosmer is off to a solid start!  Ermm...maybe not so far

https://www.bleachernation.com/cubs/2023/04/14/eric-hosmers-start-hasnt-really-been-as-good-as-it-looks/

More

 

 

Sorry for the weird quote boxes, I have no idea how to easily quote different chunks of text without making it look weird.  Kind of frustrating

When you paste the quote in, you should be seeing an alert pop up that says it's formatted as rich text and it should be giving you the option to post as plain text instead.  Post as plain text.