It's Maddoning

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

maddon is the perfect example of how none of us know just how much impact a manager can actually have.

 

Four years here, four 90+ win seasons! Wow!

Also we've had awesome players that whole time. Hmm.

 

World Series win!

Also he horsefeathers that series up and we won in spite of him.

 

He's not afraid of new concepts and will try different things to get value out of his players.

Also he's a Trump-loving buffoon who can't even say the right thing about domestic violence even when given multiple opportunities.

 

I feel like he's a good coach who players like and that is very important, especially with our roster where most of the key players have been here under Maddon and will be here in the future. Keeping that kind of culture going is a positive and possibly a very big positive.

 

On a macro scale (particularly visible during the playoffs for obvious reasons) he's not that great.

I don't feel like it should be too difficult to get someone who knows what reverse splits are while simultaniously being a cool guy to work with and realizes assult accusations are important, but this is baseball so maybe I'm wrong.

[ScrubMD]

I don't feel like it should be too difficult to get someone who knows what reverse splits are while simultaniously being a cool guy to work with and realizes assult accusations are important, but this is baseball so maybe I'm wrong.

 

I was hoping my suggestion from the game thread would get more traction.

 

 

"Calculating...calculating...Tommy Lastella sucks. Calculating...calculating...horsefeathers Addison Russell."

 

Then he rolls back into the manager's office for the rest of the day.

[ConstableRabbit]

crazy to me that he's at the end of that deal. feels like yesterday.

It might feel crazy because the end of the deal is a year from now lol

[Aaron_Kennelly]

I don't feel like it should be too difficult to get someone who knows what reverse splits are while simultaniously being a cool guy to work with and realizes assult accusations are important, but this is baseball so maybe I'm wrong.

 

I was hoping my suggestion from the game thread would get more traction.

 

 

"Calculating...calculating...Tommy Lastella sucks. Calculating...calculating...horsefeathers Addison Russell."

 

Then he rolls back into the manager's office for the rest of the day.

 

Until he leaves the park and goes to a Kanye West concert during the NLCS.

[David]

crazy to me that he's at the end of that deal. feels like yesterday.

It might feel crazy because the end of the deal is a year from now lol

 

i'm saying it feels crazy because he's entering the final year of the deal

[ConstableRabbit]

crazy to me that he's at the end of that deal. feels like yesterday.

It might feel crazy because the end of the deal is a year from now lol

 

i'm saying it feels crazy because he's entering the final year of the deal

I know, I was just joking.

[Gmoney08]

This team should just be varying degrees of a hitting beast, even with injuries and long stretches without off days, not a conglomerate of slap-hitting and walks with the occasional power stroke. Something is wrong there.

 

I agree at times agonizing to watch this team.

 

But with injuries and a brutal schedule they still had the 3rd most runs in the NL & 95 wins.

 

Im over the 2018 Cubs, last night felt like a bandaid being ripped off. Just get it over with.

 

But the other side of the spectrum is that we were likely a healthy Bryant and healthy bullpen away from steamrolling the NL to the World Series again.

 

Disappointing because I feel we were way more stacked than last year even with the Darvish injury.

[Sammy Sofa]

Bryant not being healthy wasn't the only problem they had offensively, and it's not going to be the only problem going forward.

[squally1313]

Bryant not being healthy wasn't the only problem they had offensively, and it's not going to be the only problem going forward.

It could be tricky to improve the offense without hurting the defense, which dragged our team offensive WAR to 5th in baseball despite being 13th in just the offensive portion of that. Then again, we still put up the top defensive numbers in September after essentially going from Russell to Murphy, so maybe that's more a team approach that's leading to those numbers more than the defensive skill sets.

[Cubswin11]

Bryant not being healthy wasn't the only problem they had offensively, and it's not going to be the only problem going forward.

6-7+ WAR Bryant can mask a ton of things though. This overall unit is still capable of being elite, we saw that for a good chunk of the season this year. Add Bryce and it’s a behemoth. I think it’s far more likely we see up to beginning of August numbers (or whatever the drop off date was UMFAN posted) from all these guys next year for the year than these last ~40 games being long term indicators of suckage.

[Sammy Sofa]

He can only mask so much if it's in the neighborhood of second half 2018 Cubs' offense, and that's my main concern (besides that he's going to be dealing with nagging shoulder issues) since just plugging him in and watching them go hinges on things like Contreras and Russell actually being really good again, and Almora BABIPing his way unsustainably, and Baez being a walking baseball fluke being a thing that happens again...plus Rizzo just getting streakier and streaking with each season. That's a lot of if's.

 

Obviously, that's hopefully hugely mitigated if they get Harper or Machado, but I don't think it's a done deal that it's not going to be much more than what you saw the Brewers do this year in terms of usually a couple of guys hitting really well and then a bunch of dudes.

[Cubswin11]

He can only mask so much if it's in the neighborhood of second half 2018 Cubs' offense, and that's my main concern (besides that he's going to be dealing with nagging shoulder issues) since just plugging him in and watching them go hinges on things like Contreras and Russell actually being really good again, and Almora BABIPing his way unsustainably, and Baez being a walking baseball fluke being a thing that happens again...plus Rizzo just getting streakier and streaking with each season. That's a lot of if's.

I’m just not overly concerned this last ~40 games of 2018 is what any of these guys are long term. You’d have to go a long way to prove that I should be more worried about those games meaning more and predicting future sucking over looking at the body of work these guys have put up outside of that sample that says they aren’t those hitters.

 

Outside of Mar/Apr Rizzo was good to great (.980, .780, .870, 1.00+, .840, OPS by month after Mar/APR sure that’s a little streaky but it’s between being a streaky good to great hitter) . Almora was just used too much against RHP and needs to be a strict platoon guy, Baez probably isn’t this but he’s at least a ~30 HR SS moving forward even if he hits .250 that has value, Willy is going to be fine and was good most of the year until the innings killed him and I’m sure he was dealing with injuries they need to cut his games back by ~20 or so next year he was the same hitter as last year just the power was gone which maybe it doesn’t come all the way back but there’s more than this years in him.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Cubswin11

[Gmoney08]

Bryant not being healthy wasn't the only problem they had offensively, and it's not going to be the only problem going forward.

 

KB was a huge part. The other aspect was Willy who im 98% sure was playing through multiple injuries. His bat speed was zapped.. someone posted a stat in early august that he had caught 100 more innings than the 2nd most played catcher in baseball.

 

Everyone else was mostly the same or better.

 

Except Russell who sucked in 2017 as well and I consider gone.

[Clem Fandango]

Schwarber? I DID think he'd lower the K's and hit lefties better. That hasn't happened and I doubt it will going forward. Ok, so he's a 3 WAR guy. With more power still possible at least. Nothing wrong with that outcome at all.

 

He was never given the chance. Hard to get better at hitting lefties well when you only get 91 PA's against them all year.

[Gmoney08]

it's almost funny that the cubs smartest guys in the roomed themselves into believing "sure homers are up all across baseball, but what if i told you the next exploitable market inefficiency was NOT hitting homers."

 

horsefeathering dorks are so lucky jose ramirez wasn't standing four inches to his right...

 

Lol you think Theo implemented a strategy of not hitting dongs?

[Brian]

[tweet]

[/tweet]

[abuck1220]

it's almost funny that the cubs smartest guys in the roomed themselves into believing "sure homers are up all across baseball, but what if i told you the next exploitable market inefficiency was NOT hitting homers."

 

horsefeathering dorks are so lucky jose ramirez wasn't standing four inches to his right...

 

Lol you think Theo implemented a strategy of not hitting dongs?

 

you think chili davis accidentally became the team’s hitting coach?

[Sammy Sofa]

He can only mask so much if it's in the neighborhood of second half 2018 Cubs' offense, and that's my main concern (besides that he's going to be dealing with nagging shoulder issues) since just plugging him in and watching them go hinges on things like Contreras and Russell actually being really good again, and Almora BABIPing his way unsustainably, and Baez being a walking baseball fluke being a thing that happens again...plus Rizzo just getting streakier and streaking with each season. That's a lot of if's.

I’m just not overly concerned this last ~40 games of 2018 is what any of these guys are long term. You’d have to go a long way to prove that I should be more worried about those games meaning more and predicting future sucking over looking at the body of work these guys have put up outside of that sample that says they aren’t those hitters.

 

Outside of Mar/Apr Rizzo was good to great (.980, .780, .870, 1.00+, .840, OPS by month after Mar/APR sure that’s a little streaky but it’s between being a streaky good to great hitter) . Almora was just used too much against RHP and needs to be a strict platoon guy, Baez probably isn’t this but he’s at least a ~30 HR SS moving forward even if he hits .250 that has value, Willy is going to be fine and was good most of the year until the innings killed him and I’m sure he was dealing with injuries they need to cut his games back by ~20 or so next year he was the same hitter as last year just the power was gone which maybe it doesn’t come all the way back but there’s more than this years in him.

 

I think in terms of Contreras this exposed how much he NEEDS to hit to offset just how bad he is behind the plate. I'm not a huge fan of relying on a player whose value is that lopsided at such a critical position. Granted, catchers suck in general, so he's got more of a curve, but I am expecting more of a lowered expectations thing a la Schwarber with him as opposed to just assuming he's going to be this sure-thing; it's obvious he put in a lot of extra innings, but he hit the wall HARD by the end of July.

 

Rizzo is....Rizzo. His offensive value has been ticking downward on Fangraphs each season since 2015, and hey, he's 29; that's what happens. He's going to have his awesome stretches over the season, but those are going to keep getting shorter while the slumps keep getting longer. Obviously that doesn't mean he's not valuable, but it's also not realistic to not think he's not going to keep trending downward. Same with Baez, IMO; look, if he proves a million people wrong and somehow does this again, then he's some kind of sorcerer. Plus we're pretty much going to have to expect him to have some real DL time with how he plays.

 

This isn't saying the team is doomed; I just don't think 2018 was this weird outlier that isn't likely again. There's a lot of flawed/questionable players on the team. And that's not even saying the 2018 team was "truly bad" or whatever; I just think it's more likely than not that this division is going to be the Cubs battling with at least 2 other teams for much of the season for the division. But, hey, that means the Cubs are consistently competitive! That's great! We just probably won't get that "run away with it and hide all year" season.

[NOLA]

it's almost funny that the cubs smartest guys in the roomed themselves into believing "sure homers are up all across baseball, but what if i told you the next exploitable market inefficiency was NOT hitting homers."

 

horsefeathering dorks are so lucky jose ramirez wasn't standing four inches to his right...

 

Lol you think Theo implemented a strategy of not hitting dongs?

 

you think chili davis accidentally became the team’s hitting coach?

OR...Theo thought there needed to be more contact in the lineup, but unfortunately hired a guy that screwed up their approach at the plate and killed their power numbers.

[Sammy Sofa]

 

Lol you think Theo implemented a strategy of not hitting dongs?

 

you think chili davis accidentally became the team’s hitting coach?

OR...Theo thought there needed to be more contact in the lineup, but unfortunately hired a guy that screwed up their approach at the plate and killed their power numbers.

 

Which would weird, since they were 10th in strikeouts as a team last year, and ended up....9th this year.

[Cubswin11]

He can only mask so much if it's in the neighborhood of second half 2018 Cubs' offense, and that's my main concern (besides that he's going to be dealing with nagging shoulder issues) since just plugging him in and watching them go hinges on things like Contreras and Russell actually being really good again, and Almora BABIPing his way unsustainably, and Baez being a walking baseball fluke being a thing that happens again...plus Rizzo just getting streakier and streaking with each season. That's a lot of if's.

I’m just not overly concerned this last ~40 games of 2018 is what any of these guys are long term. You’d have to go a long way to prove that I should be more worried about those games meaning more and predicting future sucking over looking at the body of work these guys have put up outside of that sample that says they aren’t those hitters.

 

Outside of Mar/Apr Rizzo was good to great (.980, .780, .870, 1.00+, .840, OPS by month after Mar/APR sure that’s a little streaky but it’s between being a streaky good to great hitter) . Almora was just used too much against RHP and needs to be a strict platoon guy, Baez probably isn’t this but he’s at least a ~30 HR SS moving forward even if he hits .250 that has value, Willy is going to be fine and was good most of the year until the innings killed him and I’m sure he was dealing with injuries they need to cut his games back by ~20 or so next year he was the same hitter as last year just the power was gone which maybe it doesn’t come all the way back but there’s more than this years in him.

 

I think in terms of Contreras this exposed how much he NEEDS to hit to offset just how bad he is behind the plate. I'm not a huge fan of relying on a player whose value is that lopsided at such a critical position. Granted, catchers suck in general, so he's got more of a curve, but I am expecting more of a lowered expectations thing a la Schwarber with him as opposed to just assuming he's going to be this sure-thing; it's obvious he put in a lot of extra innings, but he hit the wall HARD by the end of July.

 

Rizzo is....Rizzo. His offensive value has been ticking downward on Fangraphs each season since 2015, and hey, he's 29; that's what happens. He's going to have his awesome stretches over the season, but those are going to keep getting shorter while the slumps keep getting longer. Obviously that doesn't mean he's not valuable, but it's also not realistic to not think he's not going to keep trending downward. Same with Baez, IMO; look, if he proves a million people wrong and somehow does this again, then he's some kind of sorcerer. Plus we're pretty much going to have to expect him to have some real DL time with how he plays.

 

This isn't saying the team is doomed; I just don't think 2018 was this weird outlier that isn't likely again. There's a lot of flawed/questionable players on the team. And that's not even saying the 2018 team was "truly bad" or whatever; I just think it's more likely than not that this division is going to be the Cubs battling with at least 2 other teams for much of the season for the division. But, hey, that means the Cubs are consistently competitive! That's great! We just probably won't get that "run away with it and hide all year" season.

All fair points and yeah the Contreras/Schwarber comp thing is a good point. Still he’s a ~3 WAR catcher, that’s huge to have and the defensive numbers there can be wonky and maybe he rates out better at some point (obviously we don’t need metrics sometimes because the eye test alone tells us he certainly isn’t good at some things and needs work, but the tools are still there to not be that bad). I don’t necessarily agree on Rizzo but get you’re overall point, he’s not ever going to be better but I think he’s still plenty capable of being a .900 OPS+ guy for a few years and his underlying abilities give him a solid floor. He’s still really consistent in where his end of year numbers roughly end up since 2015. Javy I have no clue and I think you just have to let that play out but agree on the injury thing and we need to have a decent backup there this coming year.

 

The last point on the division, idk. We’ll probably project for low-mid 90s wins again next year and nobody else will be above 86-88ish. The division is good though and limits our ceiling a bit, there isn’t a truly awful team or teams to beat up on but luckily there isn’t a juggernaut either or other team with our resources. We put ourselves in a spot to run away, relatively speaking, this year and then just fell off/Brewers got hot but it was in play ~4 weeks ago to do it to have the last 10 games or so off if things fell a bit different. It’s hard and rare to have a 2016 season and just run away with it, even the Astros and Dodgers who did it last year weren’t able to do it this year.

[jersey cubs fan]

it's almost funny that the cubs smartest guys in the roomed themselves into believing "sure homers are up all across baseball, but what if i told you the next exploitable market inefficiency was NOT hitting homers."

 

horsefeathering dorks are so lucky jose ramirez wasn't standing four inches to his right...

 

Lol you think Theo implemented a strategy of not hitting dongs?

 

you think chili davis accidentally became the team’s hitting coach?

Theo went on a pretty good "launch angle is still real to me" rant when he all but admitted Chili did stuff he didn't like. And Chip was supposedly a Maddon hire, and Theo intimated he also had disagreements with Maddon on the issue.

[Backtobanks]

It's amazing to me that players with tens of thousands of lifetime at-bats (through pros, minors, college, high school, etc.) can get so screwed up in one season by one hitting coach. At what point do Rizzo and Bryant and the other dong-smiths push back against Chili-ball?

 

Yeah, at this point in their lives and careers I thought a hitting coach ought to only correct something when you're in a slump and not changing your hitting philosophy when you're 26 years old and in the ML.

[bhogg]

Old Guy here. . . . .huge Maddon fan, but. . . . .

 

I'd say he was 100 percent what the franchise needed in 2015. Say what you want, but the 100+ year drought weighed on Cub post season teams ---- the fact that most of those playoff teams were greatly flawed only made matters worse. Joe's ability to manage personalities, keep guys lose, etc was great and I think had far more impact on 2016's WS Title than his in game stuff (duh).

 

Maybe that has run it's course --- if so, and he wants to go to Anaheim for a couple years and call it quits (pure speculation) then great. Put a statue of the man outside Wrigley today and thank the man.

 

The great news is that the culture has changed --- we're winners. Theo's tone was clear today. It would not surprise me that, with the change in culture, could mean a change in on-field leadership.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gonna hang up and listen. . . . and crawl back under my rock.

[BigSlick]

I'm totally fine going in with Maddon on the last year of his deal and see what happens. Maybe its playing with fire and unfair and puts a weird amount of pressure on Joe and his managing will slip. I dont know.

 

My thinking regarding managers is that, tactically, almost all of them are gonna do weird perplexing horsefeathers, mess a bunch of horsefeathers up, and you really can only hope to minimize the damage there. Evaluating the rest of it....is really hard if not impossible. I think its clear that Maddon is a good "player manager" however that is defined, even to the point where its a bad thing, like with Russell. The team is motivated and plays to win and morale seems high. It is what it is.

 

I think Chili Davis should be fired at the very least as a sacrificial lamb and admission that something dreadfully wrong went on with the hitting, even if it a majority of it wasn't his fault. It just has to happen.