8/15 - White Sox (Toussaint) vs Cubs (Hendricks): 7:05pm, Marquee

[squally1313]

Hoping that someone will beat me to posting ‘Must Win’ in tomorrows thread whenever it goes up 

[Irrelevant Dude]

14 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

But it’s basically one game where both teams hit poorly, save for a couple home runs, and they found some holes. Let’s not make this a bigger deal. 

You're right, and hopefully it's just "one game", but games like this are magnified when you look at the Cubs current pitching situation.  Outside of Steele and Hendricks, the other starters are a crap shoot, so it hurts to lose when the starter has a good/decent outing.  Baseball is baseball and even the best teams are going to lose games against the worst teams, but this is a stretch that the Cubs really need to capitalize on.  It would really suck to see them squander this opportunity against bad teams after working so hard to get back into the race against good teams.  Like you said though, tomorrow is another day, and hopefully one with a different outcome or else I'll be in full panic mode.

[UMFan83]

47 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

But this is just baseball. You list five guys that are struggling, one of them hit a home run tonight. You don’t mention Hoerner, 9 for his last 23 going into tonight, or Seiya’s hot streak after he sat for a week. Bellinger is 14/31 going into tonight. You add all those together, your list and mine, and you get a team that’s scored 26 runs in its last 7 games, which is hardly some crisis. It’s a 3-4 record with 6 of those games on the road. I’m not telling you it’s all going to be ok, every model has us as basically a coin flip right now. But it’s basically one game where both teams hit poorly, save for a couple home runs, and they found some holes. Let’s not make this a bigger deal. 

3.7 or whatever it is runs a game is still healthy but the team BA and OBP have gone down quite a bit in the last 7 and slugging is sustaining us.  I don't know the underlying numbers so maybe they're just crushing it at guys, but I think they're hitting .220 in the last week with an OPS in the .670s and what seems like a higher K rate and more weak contact.

There a decent chance I'm just being overly negative and my pessimistic leaning mind is looking for trends too hard, thats fine I'm well known for doing that in the past (though its been awhile since I've had emotional investment in this team so maybe people forgot?), but I think it is rational to think that the team isnt going to hit like they did in July for the rest of the year.  Maybe it's just a little bit worse, maybe its peaks and valleys not sure.

[Stratos]

Sox pen just beat our pen.  Oh well it happens I guess.  Nice to see Suzuki hit another HR.

[CubUgly]

10 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

Lot of weak contact hits. At least 4 of the 5 hits were weak contact. Then when he got them to ground into a potential double play they hit it too soft to turn a DP. At least that was what happened the first 2 innings. 

Yeah and I thought the fly to Happ in the first should have been a catch. But we gotta score more than 3 runs!!

[squally1313]

7 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

3.7 or whatever it is runs a game is still healthy but the team BA and OBP have gone down quite a bit in the last 7 and slugging is sustaining us.  I don't know the underlying numbers so maybe they're just crushing it at guys, but I think they're hitting .220 in the last week with an OPS in the .670s and what seems like a higher K rate and more weak contact.

There a decent chance I'm just being overly negative and my pessimistic leaning mind is looking for trends too hard, thats fine I'm well known for doing that in the past (though its been awhile since I've had emotional investment in this team so maybe people forgot?), but I think it is rational to think that the team isnt going to hit like they did in July for the rest of the year.  Maybe it's just a little bit worse, maybe its peaks and valleys not sure.

You’re just kinda carving up sample sizes to fit a narrative that doesn’t really exist. Unless I majorly screwed up this Fangraphs query on my phone (possible!) they’re hitting significantly better in august than they are in July (124 v 111). I assume when you mean ‘July’ you just mean ‘the winning streak’ which…yes, that’s probably not going to be the norm. 

[squally1313]

The Cubs in the last week, including last night, have a team OPS that is higher than what the Brewers have put up all year.