8/27 - Cubs (Assad) vs Pirates (Falter): 12:35pm, Marquee

[SOFNR]

Dub. Bellinger is unstoppable. 8-4 road trip. Hard to beat that. Sucks they're probably still going to end the night 4 back in the division but you can't control what the Brewers are doing. Go home and win this next series against them. 

[itisallpartoftheplan]

It’d be nice if Keegan rejoined the circle of trust!

[Transmogrified Tiger]

The Cubs are 22-10 in their last 32 games, which started over a week before they added Candelario and Cuas.  If they finish the year 21-11 they'll end with 90 wins.

[itisallpartoftheplan]

32 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Marlins win, will stay 2 GB the Cubs assuming they finish this off

Miami is 3.5 GB of the Cubs unless I’m blind.

[Rob]

13 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

I think there's some reasonable hope that he has a 130-135 wRC+ season in him over the remaining 3 seasons in his deal.  I'm not gonna hold my breath he hits 130 as some new norm over several seasons, but with the mitigating factors the last 2 years I think getting on the plus side of 3 fWAR at least once is a reasonable hope.

Oh, it's certainly possible. 3 fWAR could happen just as a function of health and a mildly lucky BABIP year. Or maybe there's a couple small tweaks or adjustments that could lead to some more power.

But at this point, there's enough data that I think it's more likely that this is simply who he is. Even if he makes those adjustments, he's already 29 and has some health issues -- the adjustments may just offset normal decline.

I'm not Kyle. I'm not saying hope is pointless. I'm still a fan of Seiya. I just don't have as much hope for his stardom as I did a year ago.

[UMFan83]

14 minutes ago, itisallpartoftheplan said:

Miami is 3.5 GB of the Cubs unless I’m blind.

Holy horsefeathers, I thought they were only 2 back.  Geez, guess I was wrong.

So best case scenario we're either 1.5 games ahead of WC2 or 2 games clear of a playoff spot (CIN) and 3 games clear of the Giants

[Nolansomebody]

Great series win. Now beat Milwaukee.

[UMFan83]

Anyways, I know you shouldn't expect a team to go 8-4 regardless of who they are playing, but that's kind of what I was targeting for the Cubs going into this stretch.  I'd call 8-4 "getting the job done".  And we did it without playing our best baseball

Next cool benchmark would be to hit 10 games over .500 as it would be the 8th time in 9 seasons that we were able to do that at some point (2021 is a cheapie I know)

[Derwood]

With MIL about to win their 8th straight, this next series is unbelievably important. A Cubs sweep puts you one back, a MIL sweep puts you 7 back

[UMFan83]

1 minute ago, Derwood said:

With MIL about to win their 8th straight, this next series is unbelievably important. A Cubs sweep puts you one back, a MIL sweep puts you 7 back

In reality we’ll likely either be 3 back or 5 back. I can handle winning 2 of 3 and stopping their winning streak. 

[Hairyducked Idiot]

15 minutes ago, Derwood said:

With MIL about to win their 8th straight, this next series is unbelievably important. A Cubs sweep puts you one back, a MIL sweep puts you 7 back

Must-win?

[Irrelevant Dude]

1 hour ago, Derwood said:

With MIL about to win their 8th straight, this next series is unbelievably important. A Cubs sweep puts you one back, a MIL sweep puts you 7 back

I'm hoping for 4-3 or better over the next two series, but I'm trying to temper my expectations. I won't be overly upset if the Cubs lose 2 to the Brewers and split with the Reds.  I think the Reds series is much more important and I just don't want to let them gain ground in the head to head games.

[Rcal10]

2 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

I'm hoping for 4-3 or better over the next two series, but I'm trying to temper my expectations. I won't be overly upset if the Cubs lose 2 to the Brewers and split with the Reds.  I think the Reds series is much more important and I just don't want to let them gain ground in the head to head games.

They really need 3 of 4 from the reds. Need to win the head to head against them in the event of a tie breaker. 

[Rob]

54 minutes ago, Hairyducked Idiot said:

Must-win?

I know everything has been labeled as a must-win for us for the last month, and it's starting to get old.

For the purposes of winning the division, I think it's fair to claim this is an extremely important series. But the Brewer's, contrary to the last week of play, aren't the best team in baseball. I think if we take at least one game off them we can potentially outplay them the rest of the season. If we get swept, our odds sink like a stone.

For the wild-card, we've been doing well enough in all our other bajillion must-win series that we can afford to drop a series here and there and still potentially sneak into a playoff spot.

[Rob]

To that end, Cubs playoff odds are currently the highest they've been all season, at 65.6% on fangraphs. The Brewers run has us down to a 14.1% chance to take the division, but we are a solid favorite to win a wild card berth at this point.

[UMFan83]

Looks like Arizona is gonna win today. Up 5-2 in the 8th. 
 

If so, we’ll be 2 games clear of the playoff cutline and 0.5 ahead of Arizona for WC2

[CubUgly]

2 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

Anyways, I know you shouldn't expect a team to go 8-4 regardless of who they are playing, but that's kind of what I was targeting for the Cubs going into this stretch.  I'd call 8-4 "getting the job done".  And we did it without playing our best baseball.

 

I thought we needed to go at least 8-4 in that stretch and I don't think that was at all unreasonable.  What I did not expect and I don't think anyone including Brewer fans, expected the Brewers to do what they did. 

Now there were a couple of games of the 4 we lost that one coud argue Rossi crapped the bed, but I know we can play that game the other way and debate that all night and get nowhere, so I won't.  But 8-4 is acceptable, now a crucial stretch all against teams we are vying against is upon us and it will tell the tale. 

[UMFan83]

Yeah kind of crazy, 20 of our last 32 are against teams we're currently competing against for playoff spots.  Schedule is broken down like this:

Competing against for playoff spots (20 games):

vs. MIL, @ MIL

@ CIN

vs. SF

vs. ARI, @ ARI

 

Bad teams (9 games):

@ COL, vs. COL

vs. PIT

 

Great teams (3 games):

@ ATL

Edited August 27, 2023 by UMFan83

[Rcal10]

Great team with possibly nothing to play for-3 games.

[soccer10k]

13 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

Great team with possibly nothing to play for-3 games.

Yeah, that definitely matters. I doubt the Braves will rest everyone but they probably won't throw their full lineup all three games, extend their starting pitchers to 100 pitches or throw their best pen guys each night.

[soccer10k]

With that Milwaukee series there’s a decent chance that series either:

A. Only matters in terms of the division/WC placement and both teams are in the playoffs, in the scenario where both teams continue to play well 

B. Only matters to one team (probably the Cubs since we’re 4 back and would need an 8 game turnaround) since the other would have the division locked up and whoever wins the division isn’t catching LA or Atl.

So that last week isn’t nearly as daunting as it seems.

[Sosa21MVP]

It was nice of the Cardiac Cubs to have a chill win today, lol. 🙂

[thawv]

15 hours ago, Derwood said:

How do we petition Ross to move Seiya/Jeimer up in the order and Dansby/Happ down?

Give me:

Tauchman
Hoerner
Bellinger
Jeimer
Seiya
Happ
Dansby
Gomes/Amaya
Madrigal

This looks about as good as the lineup can be.  I would switch Tauchman and Happ.  Either way, I like it!

[thawv]

14 hours ago, Rob said:

Oh, it's certainly possible. 3 fWAR could happen just as a function of health and a mildly lucky BABIP year. Or maybe there's a couple small tweaks or adjustments that could lead to some more power.

But at this point, there's enough data that I think it's more likely that this is simply who he is. Even if he makes those adjustments, he's already 29 and has some health issues -- the adjustments may just offset normal decline.

I'm not Kyle. I'm not saying hope is pointless. I'm still a fan of Seiya. I just don't have as much hope for his stardom as I did a year ago.

Moving forward, I'm quite a bit more optimistic than you are.  Most of the data we have, is from his old approach.  If this is the new Suzuki, I'm throwing the old data in the garbage. 

[JBears79]

Finally back from 2 weeks in Europe. Watched yesterday's game. Suzuki looks like a completely different hitter. Hope Dansby breaks out of his slump soon