Cubs (Hendricks) vs Diamondbacks (Henry): 4/16/24, 8:40pm, Marquee

[Brock Beauchamp]

West coast trips are usually rough. This one is going pretty okay.

[squally1313]

Do you give Busch the start tonight against the lefty? Has gotten all of 6 PAs against them this year (0/6, 2 Ks). 

[squally1313]

It's weird watching the team statistics bounce around and slowly start to normalize out. Per pythag W/L, Cubs have been a game lucky so far this year, still at a .562 clip. But FG has our offense at 17th overall and our pitching at 13th, which is weird because I would have told the narrative as the offense carrying shaky pitching thus far. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

5 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Do you give Busch the start tonight against the lefty? Has gotten all of 6 PAs against them this year (0/6, 2 Ks). 

Henry doesn't throw hard and has gotten hit pretty hard by LHH in his time in MLB, so probably given Busch's heater?  It's basically at Madrigal's expense if no one else is getting an off day, Canario to RF, Cooper to DH, Morel stays at 3B.

[Tryptamine]

These west coast late night games are killing me. 

[Jason Ross]

18 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Do you give Busch the start tonight against the lefty? Has gotten all of 6 PAs against them this year (0/6, 2 Ks). 

Busch didn't have terrible splits against LHP in Triple-A. He actually struck out at a better rate against LHP than RHP last year. What does seem to go is the power. I don't think Busch should be treated as a full-platoon option at first and this feels like the kind of LHP that Busch should be given goes against. With the Marlins sporting a heavy rotation on lefties, he'll probably sit once or twice later in the week already. I'd be inclined to have him start tonight.

[We Got The Whole 9]

The Brewers having the 2nd best offense in the league right now just annoys me to no end. Contreras and Yelich both over 200. GTFOH. 

The Cubs having a league average offense with ****** defense across the board and no added value on the paths under Counsell is a little surprising too. Over the last 7 games we hit 200/266/353. A lot of disgusting ABs really.

 

Dansby - 93

Happ - 91

Tauchman - 88

Nico - 87

Morel - 82 (!)

Cody - 54

 

😭

Edited April 16, 2024 by We Got The Whole 9

[Bertz]

5 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

The Brewers having the 2nd best offense in the league right now just annoys me to no end. Contreras and Yelich both over 200. GTFOH. 

The Cubs having a league average offense with ****** defense across the board and no added value on the paths under Counsell is a little surprising too. Over the last 7 games we hit 200/266/353. A lot of disgusting ABs really.

 

Dansby - 93

Happ - 91

Tauchman - 88

Nico - 87

Morel - 82 (!)

Cody - 54

 

😭

Look at the opponent's starting pitchers from the last 7 games

[We Got The Whole 9]

19 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Look at the opponent's starting pitchers from the last 7 games

Darvish 418/471

Musgrove 629/840

Cease 2.16/3.23

Miller 196/360

Hancock 798/681

Castillo 582/370

Kelly 219/327

 

Not the most daunting gauntlet. 3 of these guys have been hammered, 3 have been ace-level, 1 has been mediocre. Expect to scrape by against 3 of them, fine, but the other 4 games they've done squat. They have the 3rd lowest Zcontact and 5th lowest contact rate in that span. They're just getting blown away.

 

 

 

 

[Rob]

Fangraphs has a fun little thing on the team pages when you check the schedule. They keep track of who was favored to win or not. You can check it out here.

So far, the Cubs have won 100% of the games we were favored to win. Of course, we've only been favored to win in 5 of 16 games so far. The ones we have been favored to win fall in one or both of two categories (1) Imanaga starts or (2) games against the Rockies.

Edit: Forgot to mention the reason I brought this up. They've got us with a 43% chance to take this one off the D'backs.

Edited April 16, 2024 by Rob

[CubinNY]

"43, sounds like a good bet to make some money," said the degenerate gamble. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

6 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

Darvish 418/471

Musgrove 629/840

Cease 2.16/3.23

Miller 196/360

Hancock 798/681

Castillo 582/370

Kelly 219/327

 

Not the most daunting gauntlet. 3 of these guys have been hammered, 3 have been ace-level, 1 has been mediocre. Expect to scrape by against 3 of them, fine, but the other 4 games they've done squat. They have the 3rd lowest Zcontact and 5th lowest contact rate in that span. They're just getting blown away.

What do you think the average 7 game stretch looks like?  Ignore the sample size of 2024, it is rare to have to face that caliber of SP so continuously, never mind entirely on the road and in pitcher-friendly stadiums.  And we can extend back to the Dodgers series, in the last 10 games they've faced 6 of the Top 45 SP by ZiPS, plus Miller and Kelly.

[CubinNY]

1 minute ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

What do you think the average 7 game stretch looks like?  Ignore the sample size of 2024, it is rare to have to face that caliber of SP so continuously, never mind entirely on the road and in pitcher-friendly stadiums.  And we can extend back to the Dodgers series, in the last 10 games they've faced 6 of the Top 45 SP by ZiPS, plus Miller and Kelly.

Yes, they are banking some good wins early in the season. To play this well against the competition they've faced is great. 

Dodgers (H)

Rangers (A)

D-Backs (A)

Padres (A)

------

Mariners  (A)

Rockies (H)

That's a tough schedule for any team. 

[We Got The Whole 9]

8 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

What do you think the average 7 game stretch looks like?  Ignore the sample size of 2024, it is rare to have to face that caliber of SP so continuously, never mind entirely on the road and in pitcher-friendly stadiums.  And we can extend back to the Dodgers series, in the last 10 games they've faced 6 of the Top 45 SP by ZiPS, plus Miller and Kelly.

And what about the other 20 pitchers faced in that span? 

[We Got The Whole 9]

If the team has playoff aspirations they better start hitting high-caliber pitching. Period. 

[squally1313]

Jesus it’s a 7 game sample size where you admitted we went up against 3 aces. How many aces do you think there are that going against them 42% of the time is a normal distribution. 

[squally1313]

Imanaga shut down the dodgers, clearly they’ve got some work to do if they want to consider themselves a playoff team. 

[We Got The Whole 9]

1 minute ago, squally1313 said:

Jesus it’s a 7 game sample size where you admitted we went up against 3 aces. How many aces do you think there are that going against them 42% of the time is a normal distribution. 

So again, struggling aginst those guys is to be expected but they're not hitting anyone during that stretch, 3 of those guys have been abused in their other outings. 

[Bertz]

1 minute ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

If the team has playoff aspirations they better start hitting high-caliber pitching. Period. 

The Cubs went 4-3 on the road without their ace during this stretch?  

[Rob]

Just now, Bertz said:

The Cubs went 4-3 on the road without their ace during this stretch?  

We're roughly 10% of the way done with the season and on pace for 100 wins despite this being one of the tougher months for our schedule.

[Rob]

Like yeah, I'm not going to look at this team and claim it's perfect and there are no weaknesses. Jed clearly needs to try to make some moves once players start becoming available.

But nobody's available now, and the Cubs are overall looking way better than expected.

It feels like it takes real effort to be negative at this point in the season.

[Rex Buckingham]

2 minutes ago, Rob said:

We're roughly 10% of the way done with the season and on pace for 100 wins despite this being one of the tougher months for our schedule.

and Justin Steele has made one start, which he left with an injury while he was absolutely cruising and we eventually lost by a single run

[Transmogrified Tiger]

7 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

So again, struggling aginst those guys is to be expected but they're not hitting anyone during that stretch, 3 of those guys have been abused in their other outings. 

They're averaging a hair under 4 runs per game in that 7 game stretch, league average so far is 4.5.  I just can't see danger in that small sample when they have about as difficult a set of external circumstances as you can(very strong opposing SP, on the road against competitive teams, in pitcher's parks), and they went 4-3 while being one swing or two from being league average offensively during the span.

[CubinNY]

If they can play .500 against playoff caliber teams and beat up the also-rans like they have done, they will be in a great spot at the end of the season. 

Yes, I worry about the pen and they need some SLG off the bench, but they are a solid overall team. 

Edited April 16, 2024 by CubinNY

[Brian707]

10 minutes ago, Rob said:

Like yeah, I'm not going to look at this team and claim it's perfect and there are no weaknesses. Jed clearly needs to try to make some moves once players start becoming available.

But nobody's available now, and the Cubs are overall looking way better than expected.

It feels like it takes real effort to be negative at this point in the season.

Agreed, people by nature like to jump to conclusions early on. Wait until Memorial Day, thats a good measuring stick.

 

Also, we could be White Sox fans- they are on pace for a 20-142 season