Pirates (Keller) vs. Cubs (Taillon) - 5/19/24 1:20 CST - Marquee

[UMFan83]

[Irrelevant Dude]

Remember when the bullpen was this team's big concern?  Those were the days.

[PeanutPunch33]

9 minutes ago, cl smooth said:

what's wrong with dexter fowler?

he's okay, i just think there are too many chefs in the kitchen.. I forgot about Cam Maybin too 

[CubinNY]

43 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

Remember when the bullpen was this team's big concern?  Those were the days.

The offense has been my main concern for awhile 

[JBears79]

46 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

This is one of the worst offensive stretches/series I can remember in a long tims

[UMFan83]

Would be interested to hear the boards thoughts level of panic regarding the following players.  No panic is a perfectly fine answer if that is what you believe  

Ian Happ

Miles Mastrobuoni

Nick Madrigal 

Michael Busch

Kyle Hendricks

Christopher Morel

Miguel Amaya

Yan Gomes

I’ll leave off the injured players like Dansby.  I just want to get a general consensus on at least some of these guys and whether it’s too soon to be concerned (or maybe there’s nothing to be concerned about), it’s time to be concerned or “they’re at the end of their rope”

General thoughts:

Happ - When everyone is healthy there’s enough flexibility (with AAA options) to play Happ vs LHP and other potentially good matchups but I’m still not ready to really do anything with Happ. Unless something major has changed in his profile, I think sticking with him most days is still going to be the best decision in the long run. 
 

Mastrobuoni - Under .400 OPS and now struggling defensively. Kind of at the end of my rope. I know the arguments TT made re: Vazquez but I find it hard to believe he can be worse than Mastro and have little hope Mastro can hit in majors

Madrigal - Concerned but not ready to give up on yet

Busch - Not close to ready to give up on him but losing hope that he’s going to be an important bat for us this year.

Hendricks - OK if we move on but if they want to give him one last chance as a long reliever I am ok with that. 
 

Morel - I think he’s kind of slumping again but he has enough of an MLB track record that I think he’ll be fine and get hit at some point. Play every day

Amaya/Gones - Don’t think you can cut bait on Amaya at all but getting close to the point where we may need to consider making a move for a catcher in July and dump Gomes. In reality the likelihood of the cubs bringing in a catcher at the deadline and getting rid of a respected vet like Gomes is unlikely. Might be overreacting. I know there’s much more to catching than their hitting but when most of the lineup is slumping, their struggles become glaring

 

Anyways there are other opinions here and other arguments and data I’m sure im not considering so I’d be interested to hear others thoughts. 

[KCCub]

Either Hoerner is going to the IL or they’ve had enough of either Mastro or Madrigal 
 

[UMFan83]

8 minutes ago, KCCub said:

Either Hoerner is going to the IL or they’ve had enough of either Mastro or Madrigal 
 

That would be hiliarous if the Cubs put Hoerner on the IL.  I believe you are only allowed to backdate by 3 days so Nico would have to miss an additional week for an injury we were told for the past few days was not worth putting him on the IL for.  I get that hammy injuries are tough to diagnose but seems like the worst case scenario is playing a man short for 6 games only to lose the player for an additional 6 games. 

I'm gonna guess given the mental errors this weekend and the sub-.400 OPS plus the existance of options, they are sending Mastro down.

Edited May 19, 2024 by UMFan83

[Andy]

With Dansby coming off the IL and Vasquez coming up, would it be too much to hope for both of those train wrecks to be out the door?

[Andy]

50 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Would be interested to hear the boards thoughts level of panic regarding the following players.  No panic is a perfectly fine answer if that is what you believe  

Ian Happ

Miles Mastrobuoni

Nick Madrigal 

Michael Busch

Kyle Hendricks

Christopher Morel

Miguel Amaya

Yan Gomes

I’ll leave off the injured players like Dansby.  I just want to get a general consensus on at least some of these guys and whether it’s too soon to be concerned (or maybe there’s nothing to be concerned about), it’s time to be concerned or “they’re at the end of their rope”

General thoughts:

Happ - When everyone is healthy there’s enough flexibility (with AAA options) to play Happ vs LHP and other potentially good matchups but I’m still not ready to really do anything with Happ. Unless something major has changed in his profile, I think sticking with him most days is still going to be the best decision in the long run. 
 

Mastrobuoni - Under .400 OPS and now struggling defensively. Kind of at the end of my rope. I know the arguments TT made re: Vazquez but I find it hard to believe he can be worse than Mastro and have little hope Mastro can hit in majors

Madrigal - Concerned but not ready to give up on yet

Busch - Not close to ready to give up on him but losing hope that he’s going to be an important bat for us this year.

Hendricks - OK if we move on but if they want to give him one last chance as a long reliever I am ok with that. 
 

Morel - I think he’s kind of slumping again but he has enough of an MLB track record that I think he’ll be fine and get hit at some point. Play every day

Amaya/Gones - Don’t think you can cut bait on Amaya at all but getting close to the point where we may need to consider making a move for a catcher in July and dump Gomes. In reality the likelihood of the cubs bringing in a catcher at the deadline and getting rid of a respected vet like Gomes is unlikely. Might be overreacting. I know there’s much more to catching than their hitting but when most of the lineup is slumping, their struggles become glaring

 

Anyways there are other opinions here and other arguments and data I’m sure im not considering so I’d be interested to hear others thoughts. 

I'm not concerned about Morel really at all. I'm not concerned about the M&M middle infield disaster because I never thought much of either of them in the first place. Hendricks probably needs to go and that's depressing. Busch is concerning but it's hard to know what to make of him. I have no idea what to do with Happ or the catchers, if the Cubs cared much about the bats from their catchers they wouldn't have practically celebrated Contreras leaving.

Edited May 19, 2024 by Andy

[WhyCantWeWin]

20 minutes ago, KCCub said:

Either Hoerner is going to the IL or they’ve had enough of either Mastro or Madrigal 
 

Mastroboner was a total train wreck at the plate and on the field so he’s probably gone. 

[Rcal10]

57 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Would be interested to hear the boards thoughts level of panic regarding the following players.  No panic is a perfectly fine answer if that is what you believe  

Ian Happ

Miles Mastrobuoni

Nick Madrigal 

Michael Busch

Kyle Hendricks

Christopher Morel

Miguel Amaya

Yan Gomes

I’ll leave off the injured players like Dansby.  I just want to get a general consensus on at least some of these guys and whether it’s too soon to be concerned (or maybe there’s nothing to be concerned about), it’s time to be concerned or “they’re at the end of their rope”

General thoughts:

Happ - When everyone is healthy there’s enough flexibility (with AAA options) to play Happ vs LHP and other potentially good matchups but I’m still not ready to really do anything with Happ. Unless something major has changed in his profile, I think sticking with him most days is still going to be the best decision in the long run. 
 

Mastrobuoni - Under .400 OPS and now struggling defensively. Kind of at the end of my rope. I know the arguments TT made re: Vazquez but I find it hard to believe he can be worse than Mastro and have little hope Mastro can hit in majors

Madrigal - Concerned but not ready to give up on yet

Busch - Not close to ready to give up on him but losing hope that he’s going to be an important bat for us this year.

Hendricks - OK if we move on but if they want to give him one last chance as a long reliever I am ok with that. 
 

Morel - I think he’s kind of slumping again but he has enough of an MLB track record that I think he’ll be fine and get hit at some point. Play every day

Amaya/Gones - Don’t think you can cut bait on Amaya at all but getting close to the point where we may need to consider making a move for a catcher in July and dump Gomes. In reality the likelihood of the cubs bringing in a catcher at the deadline and getting rid of a respected vet like Gomes is unlikely. Might be overreacting. I know there’s much more to catching than their hitting but when most of the lineup is slumping, their struggles become glaring

 

Anyways there are other opinions here and other arguments and data I’m sure im not considering so I’d be interested to hear others thoughts. 

Morel leads MLB in MLB RBI. Not too bad for a guy slumping. I am not worried about him. His BABIP is very low. His hard contact is very high. He is fine. Just not very lucky.

[WhyCantWeWin]

Just now, Rcal10 said:

Morel leads MLB in MLB RBI. Not too bad for a guy slumping. I am not worried about him. His BABIP is very low. His hard contact is very high. He is fine. Just not very lucky.

His sac fly was like 108 exit velocity

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Happ - No concern, he has been good for too long, and is showing signs that a heater is around the corner

Mastrobuoni - Little concern, he's a bench player and I'd expect him to be stronger with the bat going forward, but ultimately he's probably not among the best 26 on the roster so I'm not going to hand-wring his minutiae.  This series was bad but far from what I'd expect as a norm.

Madrigal - Mild concern, similar to Mastrobuoni he's not of incredible importance, but continuing to not square the ball even with regular playing time makes him a rough profile.  I've long stuck up for Madrigal because people exaggerate his shortcomings since no one apparently can accept bench-level production on the bench, but he and Mastrobuoni on the same roster isn't a long term solution.

Busch - Little concern, you have to give him the runway to keep making adjustments, and even when he's struggling he's working counts and making some contributions.  Anecdotally I haven't seen any defensive misplays in a spell too.

Hendricks - High concern, he can't keep rotating between decent start, unlucky disaster start, and deserved disaster start.  Part of me hopes that if his next start or 2 doesn't go well, that he truly gets rocked, because I think he can probably right the ship to some degree, and if he admits that he's not playable right now I think he could be agreeable to working things out in Iowa.

Morel - Little concern, taking great at bats, tragically unlucky batted ball luck(.376 xwOBA).  The defense is what it is, it's not good and not going to really get much better, that's okay given the at bats he's taking now

Amaya - Medium concern, there's no real smoking gun that I can see but the unplayable offense stretches how much you can give him runway to succeed, especially since his MLB/high minors track record is not long.  

Gomes - High concern, I think I was early on the possibility that his bat is cooked, I don't need him to be last year offensively but if he's gonna be a slider speed bat he needs to punish those, because a 32 wRC+ stretches how much you can value defense from the position, doubly so with Amaya in a deep funk

[squally1313]

I don’t think Hendricks is one of our best 5-7 starters right now and I don’t think whatever he has left plays up in the pen and we need everything we can get from the starters given all the injuries and underperformance on the offensive side and we cant stash him in Iowa, so…fine. It sucks, and holy horsefeathers people around here have short memories and a weird amount of hatred here, but whatever. Make the call here and let him enjoy his well earned retirement. 
 

Morel is fine. Happ is fine. The catchers have been bad but like 80% of the catchers around are bad so I don’t know how you fix it besides hoping for some babip luck (and Amaya progression). Madrigal is a guy who should get the one ‘we need contact’ AB a game (because he’s good at it), should not ever start. Mastro…I don’t know, whatever, let’s not churn through 40 man decisions trying to fix his role because it should go back to being minimal pretty soon here (or he’s likely back at Iowa with this Vazquez news, whatever). Busch is cheap and fine, but doesn’t seem likely to be that guy who gives you outlier offensive production. Which we need. 

[CubinNY]

The off day will be good. They all look like they’re pressing a bit. They will be better when Nico and Dansby get back. But how much? 
Maybe some nice weather and the wind blowing out will help. 
 

The starters Pittsburgh had were no joke. 

[chibears55]

55 minutes ago, Andy said:

With Dansby coming off the IL and Vasquez coming up, would it be too much to hope for both of those train wrecks to be out the door?

Yes, hopefully this is the start of making some changes to the roster.

This team needs a shot in the arm, a spark to get them going

[Rcal10]

 I team is as bad as they look when they are going bad  as good as they look when things are going well. The fact that the Cubs are 4 over and actually look pretty bad is encouraging. They will start playing better. Guys like Happ, Swanson, Morel all either have a history of history better than this or.in Morel’s case, hitting into very bad luck. What we need to hope for is Busch to find his stroke again. If he doesn’t I would consider moving Bellinger to 1st and maybe trying Davis. Maybe he gives them a spark. Outfield and DH consist of Tauchman, Davis, PCA, Suzuki and Happ. Rotate guys in. I think catcher is going to be a problem all year. Just going to have to live with what they have. As for guys constantly complaining about Mastrobouni and Madrigal, I just don’t get it. They are bench guys. They shouldn’t be playing so really them being bad shouldn’t be a surprise. And there is no one else in the system. I also doubt they trade for a backup middle infielder/bench bat. 
I am not advocating Davis now. I would still give Busch a chance to come out of his funk. I am just saying if there is one thing they can do aafter trying Busch a little longer, that might be it. 
Glad to see Vasquez coming up. But I do think he probably isn’t any better a hitter than Madrigal or  Mastrobuoni. I just hope he replaces one of them and isn’t coming up because now Hoerner is going on the IL. At least he is supposed to play good defense. 

[Irrelevant Dude]

3 hours ago, KCCub said:

Either Hoerner is going to the IL or they’ve had enough of either Mastro or Madrigal 
 

With all the talk about changes to the forums, this is a perfect example of something that should have its own thread and be discussed in the Transactions forum.  I'm my opinion, the "all today's topics go in the current day's game thread" makes the board very difficult to follow unless you are keeping up with everything on a daily basis.  Someone shouldn't have to dig through hundreds of posts in a game thread to find out about roster moves such as this one.

[JD94]

4 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

Would be interested to hear the boards thoughts level of panic regarding the following players.  No panic is a perfectly fine answer if that is what you believe  

Ian Happ

Miles Mastrobuoni

Nick Madrigal 

Michael Busch

Kyle Hendricks

Christopher Morel

Miguel Amaya

Yan Gomes

I’ll leave off the injured players like Dansby.  I just want to get a general consensus on at least some of these guys and whether it’s too soon to be concerned (or maybe there’s nothing to be concerned about), it’s time to be concerned or “they’re at the end of their rope”

General thoughts:

Happ - When everyone is healthy there’s enough flexibility (with AAA options) to play Happ vs LHP and other potentially good matchups but I’m still not ready to really do anything with Happ. Unless something major has changed in his profile, I think sticking with him most days is still going to be the best decision in the long run. 
 

Mastrobuoni - Under .400 OPS and now struggling defensively. Kind of at the end of my rope. I know the arguments TT made re: Vazquez but I find it hard to believe he can be worse than Mastro and have little hope Mastro can hit in majors

Madrigal - Concerned but not ready to give up on yet

Busch - Not close to ready to give up on him but losing hope that he’s going to be an important bat for us this year.

Hendricks - OK if we move on but if they want to give him one last chance as a long reliever I am ok with that. 
 

Morel - I think he’s kind of slumping again but he has enough of an MLB track record that I think he’ll be fine and get hit at some point. Play every day

Amaya/Gones - Don’t think you can cut bait on Amaya at all but getting close to the point where we may need to consider making a move for a catcher in July and dump Gomes. In reality the likelihood of the cubs bringing in a catcher at the deadline and getting rid of a respected vet like Gomes is unlikely. Might be overreacting. I know there’s much more to catching than their hitting but when most of the lineup is slumping, their struggles become glaring

 

Anyways there are other opinions here and other arguments and data I’m sure im not considering so I’d be interested to hear others thoughts. 

On a scale of 1-10. 1 being no concern. 10 being they probably shouldn’t be on the roster.

Happ 6

Mastro 10

Madrigal 9

Busch 5

Hendricks 10

Morel 2

Amaya 4

Gomes 10

To be fair a lot of this is based on recency bias. Pittsburgh threw 4 good to elite starters at us. Atlanta threw 2 very good starters against us. It’s just been tough luck on the pitching matchups these last 3 series. It won’t always be this hard, but it would be nice if we showed a little more life in some of these games. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

59 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

With all the talk about changes to the forums, this is a perfect example of something that should have its own thread and be discussed in the Transactions forum.  I'm my opinion, the "all today's topics go in the current day's game thread" makes the board very difficult to follow unless you are keeping up with everything on a daily basis.  Someone shouldn't have to dig through hundreds of posts in a game thread to find out about roster moves such as this one.

Agreed. We do split things like this off when we notice them, but Sunday evening after a game isn't peak noticing hours.

[BigbadB]

12 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

I'm gonna guess given the mental errors this weekend and the sub-.400 OPS plus the existance of options, they are sending Mastro down.

After yesterday's game, if they do anything other than send Mastro down, people will lose their minds. That last throw to 1b was it for me. You can't suck this bad and then make that throw at a time when the team is struggling. Bye Miles!

[spaincubsfan]

15 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

Some more detail:

 

[Bertz]

15 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

BABIP: 190

[Bertz]

Hendricks is currently in line to start Thursday, so them throwing a TBD up there says something.  I wonder if the plan is a bullpen game (led by Brown/Wesneski) unless the bullpen gets shredded Tuesday/Wednesday?  Or if you wanted to get wild you could call up Horton....