8/19 - Royals (Singer) vs Cubs (Steele): 1:20pm, Marquee

[Brock Beauchamp]

The Cubs have put themselves into something of a must-win situation to not drop a series to the Royals, particularly with Steele on the mound today.

The Royals suck, just put up six runs early and cruise from there.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Stolen from the EW Facebook group. Painfully accurate.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Jed not messing around with sunk costs this year

[itisallpartoftheplan]

Wow. Can’t believe they did it.

[UMFan83]

Pretty sure Barnhart caught a lot of Stroman starts.  Guess that’s why he’s not needed anymore. 
 

as TT eluded to, Tucker is owed 3.25m next year 

[Cubs420psd]

18 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Jed not messing around with sunk costs this year

No Ricketts isn't messing around. If he didn't give Jed the green light these bums would still be on the roster.

[Cubs420psd]

Good. Now do Patrick wisdom. It blows my mind how this guy still has a spot on this roster, and even more crazy, they still play him on defense.

 

 

[UMFan83]

7 minutes ago, Cubs420psd said:

No Ricketts isn't messing around. If he didn't give Jed the green light these bums would still be on the roster.

Not necessarily. Theoretically Tom doesn’t care how much dead money is on the payroll as long as Jed stays on budget. Yes it’s possible Tom has given Jed a 2024 budget high enough to not have to worry about the $10m owed to Mancini and Barnhart next year but it’s also possible that these are moves Jed had to make for this year and he’ll pay for it when constructing next years roster. 
 

it’s probably more of the former than the latter as it seems inevitable the Cubs will go into the tax next season. 

[UMFan83]

4 minutes ago, Cubs420psd said:

Good. Now do Patrick wisdom. It blows my mind how this guy still has a spot on this roster, and even more crazy, they still play him on defense.

 

 

I had a feeling we’d see a Wisdom DFA today in a “Ross can’t stop hurting the team by playing him so I have to remove that option for him” but I guess I was wrong. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

38 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Jed not messing around with sunk costs this year

Is it legal to carry only two catchers?

[CubUgly]

3 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

The Cubs have put themselves into something of a must-win situation to not drop a series to the Royals, particularly with Steele on the mound today.

The Royals suck, just put up six runs early and cruise from there.

Royals 11-9 in their last 20 - Singer very soled since the ASB.  Gotta just go out and take this can't rely on the Royals suck theme - remember the Cubs finished strong last year -even swept the Phillies in Sept. when the Phillies had everything to play for. 

 

Start hitting the ball - quit losing games on the margins with curious lineup decisions and playing guys in the field at positions they can't and should not be put in positions to play!  This has happened too damn much this year and needs to stop!

[chibears55]

14 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Not necessarily. Theoretically Tom doesn’t care how much dead money is on the payroll as long as Jed stays on budget. Yes it’s possible Tom has given Jed a 2024 budget high enough to not have to worry about the $10m owed to Mancini and Barnhart next year but it’s also possible that these are moves Jed had to make for this year and he’ll pay for it when constructing next years roster. 
 

it’s probably more of the former than the latter as it seems inevitable the Cubs will go into the tax next season. 

Probably won't have to worry too much about reaching next year's budget if some of those prospects makes it up and sticks.

[chibears55]

16 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

I had a feeling we’d see a Wisdom DFA today in a “Ross can’t stop hurting the team by playing him so I have to remove that option for him” but I guess I was wrong. 

Being the HR leader on this team that lacks consistent power is what probably saving him. 

[Cubs420psd]

2 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

Being the HR leader on this team that lacks consistent power is what probably saving him. 

Yeah probably but it shouldn't. How many home runs has he hit since April? dude's been ass for months now.

 

And again, if you want to keep him around and DH him every once in awhile okay that makes a little more sense, but to play him on defense? For a team that supposedly values defense? It's horsefeathers stupid.

Edited August 19, 2023 by Cubs420psd

[UMFan83]

10 minutes ago, CubUgly said:

Royals 11-9 in their last 20 - Singer very soled since the ASB.  Gotta just go out and take this can't rely on the Royals suck theme - remember the Cubs finished strong last year -even swept the Phillies in Sept. when the Phillies had everything to play for. 

 

Start hitting the ball - quit losing games on the margins with curious lineup decisions and playing guys in the field at positions they can't and should not be put in positions to play!  This has happened too damn much this year and needs to stop!

11-9 is a bit deceiving. That stretch started with a 7 game winning streak and they are 4-9 since that streak ended including yesterday’s win. Their offense though has been really good as of late, not a great time for a team with a struggling starting staff and slumping offense to face them. 

Edited August 19, 2023 by UMFan83

[UMFan83]

3 minutes ago, Cubs420psd said:

Yeah probably but it shouldn't. How many home runs has he hit since April? dude's been ass for months now.

 

And again, if you want to keep him around and DH him every once in awhile okay that makes a little more sense, but to play him on defense? For a team that supposedly values defense? It's horsefeathers stupid.

He’s actually hit well in a small sample size since his return from injury as others pointed out recently. 6 HR in 42 PA and an OPS over 1.000 despite a .188 BABIP. But he’s been hurting us on defense quite a bit and with Candelario, Bellinger, Madrigal and now Mastrobuoni as corner IF options it just doesn’t make sense to play him other than a backup DH for Morel imo.  We’ve seen enough of Wisdom over the last 3 seasons to know who he is and I’m not sure there’s a roster spot available for who he is. 

[CubUgly]

2 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

11-9 is a bit deceiving. That stretch started with a 7 game winning streak and they are 4-9 since that streak ended including yesterday’s win. Their offense though has been really good as of late, not a great time for a team with a struggling starting staff and slumping offense to face them. 

Look at the games though.  First of all you just can't discount a 7-game streak - it happened and they competed well during the 4-9 generally and Singer you didn't mention - if we lose this game they'll point to his ERA, but since the ASB he has been good,

You can say yesterday should not have been close and I would not disagree, but ultimately, IMHO that game was lost on the margins due to very questionable managing decisions.  Now you can argue it should not come down to that but it did and the dicisions were definitely up for criticism. 

 

 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Just now, UMFan83 said:

We’ve seen enough of Wisdom over the last 3 seasons to know who he is and I’m not sure there’s a roster spot available for who he is. 

I'm not itching to keep Wisdom around, but in this specific 26 man roster he can serve a narrow purpose of platoon/PH RH power.  Other options are mostly left handed hitters, unless you want to add Bote or Perlaza to the 40 man, but I personally don't think much of their short term value in that narrow role compared to Wisdom.

[WhyCantWeWin]

Bums like Barnhart and Mancini have actually cost the team wins. Hoyer should have made these moves sooner. They'd be in a much better spot. Maybe he'll also stop signing crappy vets, those dollars could have been allocated much more intelligently. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

40 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

He’s actually hit well in a small sample size since his return from injury as others pointed out recently. 6 HR in 42 PA and an OPS over 1.000 despite a .188 BABIP. But he’s been hurting us on defense quite a bit and with Candelario, Bellinger, Madrigal and now Mastrobuoni as corner IF options it just doesn’t make sense to play him other than a backup DH for Morel imo.  We’ve seen enough of Wisdom over the last 3 seasons to know who he is and I’m not sure there’s a roster spot available for who he is. 

Yeah, Wisdom has been quite good in limited playing time. In July and August, he has a .926 OPS, though in only 55 plate appearances.

[Bobson Dugnutt]

12 minutes ago, WhyCantWeWin said:

Bums like Barnhart and Mancini have actually cost the team wins. Hoyer should have made these moves sooner. They'd be in a much better spot. Maybe he'll also stop signing crappy vets, those dollars could have been allocated much more intelligently. 

The misallocation of dollars really aggravates me. ~$20 million to Mancini, Barnhart, and Smyly that could’ve gone toward solidifying the middle of the rotation.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I’d sure feel a lot better heading into this 28 games in 28 days stretch with Senga, Walker, Eflin, or someone from that tier of the 2023 FA class. Jed made some really nice moves this off-season, but I do wish he hadn’t wasted meaningful dollars to less than useless players.

 

I know Smyly has provided some value at points this season and it might be unfair to lump him in with the other two, but pooling the resources dedicated to all three to level up a tier on the 2nd starting pitching acquisition would’ve been a wiser use of funds.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I'll maintain that Barnhart was and is fine as a backup catcher.  The line for an "average" offensive output for a backup catcher this year is about a 64 wRC+, which is a threshold that Barnhart is like 2-3 hits on his season line from reaching(and what his line has been since May).  I also think that while you don't want to fritter away money on marginal players, you can't necessarily pool all that money towards a different upgrade.  Yes, they'd be better off today if they had Senga instead of Mancini/Smyly, but that's also a 5 year commitment that signed much earlier in the offseason, and we have reason to think that Mancini/Barnhart in particular was a Plan B reaction to not getting their primary target(probably Vazquez).  In the case of SP depth they also had Wesneski looking like a mid-rotation stalwart post-trade as insurance.

My criticism of how that roster developed is two-fold.  You can't have 3 catchers on a modern roster if you aren't using them, and we've spent months in a weird liminal space where Amaya increasingly gains trust as a catcher but doesn't get much opportunity as a PH/DH/1B despite yawning chasms in those spots.  And for as much as I can understand how they got to the 1B triad of Mancini/Hosmer/Mervis, you can't go 0 for 3 in getting even MLB average production.  Morel saved them a bit because that would be pretty dark otherwise.

[chibears55]

1 hour ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

I'm not itching to keep Wisdom around, but in this specific 26 man roster he can serve a narrow purpose of platoon/PH RH power.  Other options are mostly left handed hitters, unless you want to add Bote or Perlaza to the 40 man, but I personally don't think much of their short term value in that narrow role compared to Wisdom.

I'm just a little surprise they haven't brought Bote up at some point since the break.

[chibears55]

Belli bomb...

He and the cubs needed that

Lets Go

[Rex Buckingham]

Sutcliffe spouting some BS about guys in 17 and 18 "taking ABs for themselves and not for the team" and calling them out for trying to "hit HRs and pad their stats." 

Hey moron, you know what helps a team win games? If all their offensive players hit a bunch of dongs and have good stat lines