5/12/24 Cubs (Hendricks) @ Pirates 12:35 pm

[itisallpartoftheplan]

10 minutes ago, Andy said:

Darn, Yan hit that pretty well. Hopefully 3 is enough

Got some fortunate news.

[chibears55]

W...

Series win

Atlanta next 🙄

[JHBulls]

Just now, BKHoo said:

Adbert what an adventure. Even the last out - the ball got crushed. 

You just know he hasn’t topped out at however many blown saves he’s managed so far. 

[BKHoo]

Was Morel limping in the dugout?

Edited May 12, 2024 by BKHoo

[gflore34]

Adbert is terrible thankfully, Grandal and Taylor are worse.

[Dfan25]

Really don’t know what they can do with Alzolay . I don’t remember any pitcher getting hit this hard on the air . I know MLB is on top of the phantom injuries this year , but they may need to try it . 

[Cubfanintheknow]

Would it be too much to ask Adbert to punch a locker? A stint to the IL and a little Des Moines rehab might do him good. 

[Illiterate Scholar]

I guess credit to Alzolay for not completely crumbling after that walk. His internal monolog probably wasn't a very happy place at that point

[profisme]

Just now, Dfan25 said:

Really don’t know what they can do with Alzolay . I don’t remember any pitcher getting hit this hard on the air . I know MLB is on top of the phantom injuries this year , but they may need to try it . 

I feel like we have already done that with Kyle this year, but Adbert just doesn’t seem right. Maybe he needs to channel his inner Tin Cup and go see Rene Russo. 

[CubinNY]

They just keep winning series. It’s pretty impressive. 

[CubinNY]

I think Adbert may be tipping his pitches 

[Tryptamine]

7 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

I think Adbert may be tipping his pitches 

It's meatballs and a miracle the first pitch to Taylor wasn't taken over the wall too.

[gflore34]

3 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

It's meatballs and a miracle the first pitch to Taylor wasn't taken over the wall too.

I figure it's poetic justice for Seiya missing on a ball that would have been a HR at Wrigley and Cruz getting a wind aided HR on a massive pop fly.

[Rcal10]

I didn’t get to see the end of the game. Why was Morel taken out? Is he hurt now too? 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

12 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

I didn’t get to see the end of the game. Why was Morel taken out? Is he hurt now too? 

He probably is a little banged up from the slide into second yesterday, but as far as I know him being taken out was purely to improve late inning defense, like has happened about a dozen other times so far this year.

[Crusader]

Michael Busch’s K rate and OBP are getting to be concerning. Dude has a 36% k-rate and a sub .315 OBP…

He’s getting killed whenever he’s chasing pitches out of the zone. He has a 48.6% contact rate on pitches out of the zone that he chases. All his other underlying numbers are solid though.

Edited May 13, 2024 by Crusader

[gflore34]

Alozay is this season' Fulmer, only worse, has already given up 6 HR's, Fulmer gave up 7 in 57 IP last season.  Nearly every at bat Alozay manages to hang a slider or fail to properly locate a FB, meatball after meatball, just like Fulmer.

Edited May 13, 2024 by gflore34

[UMFan83]

I wasn't able to watch today and wasn't able to really follow most of the game until the end.  Obviously I see Kyle's numbers which seem very encouraging and hopefully at least temporarily calms down the talk of firing him into the sun, but did he actually look as good as his numbers suggest?  I'm watching the expanded highlights now, looks like a few hard hit balls early but the HR was pretty ridiculous and he seemed to have good command of his fastball.  Encouraging?

Also holy horsefeathers watching the highlights, this must have been a super annoying game with all the ridiculous defensive plays from the Pirates to prevent runs from scoring, plus a couple of Pirates beating IF singles out by inches, one leading to a run scored.  And Neris once again is Rod Beck incarnate, managing to get 1 pitch from losing the game but getting out of it.  I eventually got behind guys like Beck and Borowski and felt some level of comfort in their pitching despite consistently getting into trouble, but I'm nowhere close to feeling that way about Neris despite him managing to get out of nearly every jam he's created. 

[Stratos]

7 hours ago, PeanutPunch33 said:

LOLzolay is seriously horsefeathers awful.. send him to Triple A ASAP so he can think about how his bad play is affecting the whole team.. 

I checked, he has no options left.  At minimum he can't pitch in modest leads.

[UMFan83]

5 minutes ago, Stratos said:

I checked, he has no options left.  At minimum he can't pitch in modest leads.

It’s crazy it seems like a large majority of the games lately are tight throughout. 10 of our last 14 games have been decided by 1 or 2 runs. Feels like there just aren’t a ton of situations where he can pitch in a very low leverage situation like he did on Friday. 

[Stratos]

2 hours ago, Crusader said:

Michael Busch’s K rate and OBP are getting to be concerning. Dude has a 36% k-rate and a sub .315 OBP…

He’s getting killed whenever he’s chasing pitches out of the zone. He has a 48.6% contact rate on pitches out of the zone that he chases. All his other underlying numbers are solid though.

Over the last month (since April 13, so 25 games) he has 101 PA, a 39.6 K%, 6.9 BB%, hitting .231 BA/.287 OBP/.429 SLG, 101 wRC+.  Also .198 ISO, .347 BABIP.

For context he's hitting better than Morel and Happ over that time, so it could just be a slump in a short sample.  Pitchers may have adjusted a bit and he needs to make adjustments back, who knows.  No need to panic.

 

[UMFan83]

Also just watching the replay of the game, what the hell is it with all the outs on the bases (Bellinger in the 10th)?  Many of these are somewhat explainable in a vacuum, albeit still a mistake (for example Bellinger expected a play at the plate and instead it was cut off) but when you put them all together you have a team that leads the league in outs on the bases (20), and 4 more outs than any other team in baseball outside of the Nationals (who have 19). 
 

What do you chalk up all these outs to? Just bad luck?  I don’t know if you can blame managing for many of the outs, you can maybe criticize all the outs at home on contact plays (though again individually most of them are the right call), but Bellinger for instance is pretty consistently rated as an above average baserunner in his career. He’s no Anthony Rizzo by any means. 

[Stratos]

6 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

It’s crazy it seems like a large majority of the games lately are tight throughout. 10 of our last 14 games have been decided by 1 or 2 runs. Feels like there just aren’t a ton of situations where he can pitch in a very low leverage situation like he did on Friday. 

Yeah.  We lack reliable arms.  If we can't hold leads vs the Pirates that's an issue.  A good outing by Hendricks vs the Pirates doesn't exactly prove very much either.  He was mostly hitting his spots though, besides the Cruz HR.

On the positive, Neris at least seemed to have better command today.

Pen now is:  Neris, Leiter, Alzolay, Thompson, Brewer, Lovelady, Brown and I think Cuas in for the injured Almonte now?

Not very good,  Stat-wise our biggest pen problem are the walks, which can be improved in theory (e.g. Neris), and guys like Little no longer on the roster.  But guys like Cuas and Almonte are probably going to walk a fair bit of hitters.  Pen-wise our K/9 is 8th in MLB and and HR/9 is 14th, but BB/9 is 25th.

The only hope I see beyond a trade is some miracle turnaround and/or overachieiving on some guys plus Merryweather gets healthy, or our SP get healthier and Hendricks pitches ok so Wesneski and/or Assad can head to the pen, which are all not particularly likely.  Hoyer isn't the type to panic on small samples of relievers but if things don't start improving by start of June they need to look at a trade.

[Stratos]

3 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Also just watching the replay of the game, what the hell is it with all the outs on the bases (Bellinger in the 10th)?  Many of these are somewhat explainable in a vacuum, albeit still a mistake (for example Bellinger expected a play at the plate and instead it was cut off) but when you put them all together you have a team that leads the league in outs on the bases (20), and 4 more outs than any other team in baseball outside of the Nationals (who have 19). 
 

What do you chalk up all these outs to? Just bad luck?  I don’t know if you can blame managing for many of the outs, you can maybe criticize all the outs at home on contact plays (though again individually most of them are the right call), but Bellinger for instance is pretty consistently rated as an above average baserunner in his career. He’s no Anthony Rizzo by any means. 

They've been playing sloppy much of the year so far.  I think maybe all the little injuries, the guys haven't caught their groove yet.  They need to tighten up.

Not going to blame Counsell, guys getting picked off aren't really his fault.  Ross seemed pretty good at the running game in terms of when to out guys in motion.  Former catcher I guess.

[Jason Ross]

8 hours ago, Crusader said:

Michael Busch’s K rate and OBP are getting to be concerning. Dude has a 36% k-rate and a sub .315 OBP…

He’s getting killed whenever he’s chasing pitches out of the zone. He has a 48.6% contact rate on pitches out of the zone that he chases. All his other underlying numbers are solid though.

They're not great, but he's young, and has a hole that's exploitable right now. You can see it here: 

That's since his walk-off home run in the same spot. Teams just keep going there. If there's a positive: his chase rate over the last week is down by 5%. So while he's getting beat in the zone right now there, he's not chasing and expanding the zone at a poor rate. It's likely going to be steps where he begins to not chase, then starts to fix in-the-zone stuff. Once he can force pitchers back inside he'll likely take off again.