Cubs (Imanaga) vs Guardians (Lively): 8/12/24, 5:40pm

[Brock Beauchamp]

The Cubs took the Twins to the wood shed last week, now please do the same to the Guardians. kthxbye

[Tank]

I will never not think Guardians is a stupid name. Huge missed opportunity to rebrand the team as the Spiders. 

[CubinNY]

3 minutes ago, Tank said:

I will never not think Guardians is a stupid name. Huge missed opportunity to rebrand the team as the Spiders. 

I agree, but I think they didn't do that because the Spiders were one of the worst franchises in baseball history. 

Edited August 12, 2024 by CubinNY

[Tank]

3 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

I agree, but I think they didn't do that because the Spiders were one of the worst franchises in baseball history. 

Perfect opportunity to rewrite history! I mean, even the logo would have been awesome. 

[CubinNY]

3 minutes ago, Tank said:

Perfect opportunity to rewrite history! I mean, even the logo would have been awesome. 

They could have called the park the web. The possibilities are endless. 

[Rcal10]

Going tonight. Putting my 5-2 record on the line. Love that the Cubs dumped Hendricks and are going with Imanaga. Making me start to believe they are back in the race. Really need this one! 

[Irrelevant Dude]

It is fun to say that the Cubs are only 3 games out of a Wild Card spot, and they can use that to sell the fans and try to drive ticket sales, but their playoff possibilities remain dire.

I'm glad they are playing better baseball, but they still need to pass 4 teams to get into playoff position.  The Diamondbacks and Padres are both 7 games up, a huge deficit to make up over 43 games.  That leaves the 4 required teams as the Giants, Cardinals, Mets, and Braves.  Only one of those teams really scares me, but it is the Braves with a 3 game head start.

I think the Cubs are going to need to play well over a 60% winning percentage for the rest of the year to have a fighting chance.  If they can go 26-17 or better, maybe there's a chance the Braves play .500 baseball the rest of the year and the Cubs can sneak into the last playoff spot (assuming that none of the other 3 teams also win at a similar pace to the Cubs), but there is very little room for error.

 

[squally1313]

Guardians top 3 relievers by fWAR have all pitched both of the last two games, which is a nice little benefit. Their entire bullpen has been incredible (have 7 qualified relievers throwing at least 42 innings and the highest ERA is 3.86), but at least we'll see the lower tier guys a little more than normal. 

Ben Lively, going tonight, gives up a ton of home runs. Matthew Boyd is making his debut Tuesday, he sucks but he went 6 scoreless in AAA last week so in theory he'll give you a full start. Alex Cobb on Wednesday is also coming back from injury, has made one major league start (and it didn't go well), so not worried about that one either. 

I don't know, as dumb as it sounds to dismiss a 69-49 team, especially relative to our 59-60 team....there's not a lot here? It's (a very good) Jose Ramirez and Kwan offensively (besides the inevitable Josh Naylor HR), their starting pitching stinks (Bieber and his 2 April starts was their second most valuable starter until yesterday, and we're missing Bibee who has put up 2.7 of the 3.2 total starter fWAR). Bullpen is a serious problem but they've had to throw a lot lately and their top guys had a busy weekend. They're basically a 2020-2023 Brewers clone, which admittedly hasn't gone very well for us. But it's a winnable series. 

[thawv]

19 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

It is fun to say that the Cubs are only 3 games out of a Wild Card spot, and they can use that to sell the fans and try to drive ticket sales, but their playoff possibilities remain dire.

I'm glad they are playing better baseball, but they still need to pass 4 teams to get into playoff position.  The Diamondbacks and Padres are both 7 games up, a huge deficit to make up over 43 games.  That leaves the 4 required teams as the Giants, Cardinals, Mets, and Braves.  Only one of those teams really scares me, but it is the Braves with a 3 game head start.

I think the Cubs are going to need to play well over a 60% winning percentage for the rest of the year to have a fighting chance.  If they can go 26-17 or better, maybe there's a chance the Braves play .500 baseball the rest of the year and the Cubs can sneak into the last playoff spot (assuming that none of the other 3 teams also win at a similar pace to the Cubs), but there is very little room for error.

 

Tough task for certain, but if they win 29 of 43, the teams ahead of them won't be of any concern.  For this to happen, they can't just "win the series" against the likes of, Tor, Det, Mia, Was, Col, and Oak.  They are going to have to sweep most of these series'.  

[CubinNY]

Gotta keep grinding. PCA needs to keep doing PCA stuff. Get a big HR or two from Belli and score 4 or 5 runs/game and they should win this series. 

[gflore34]

I think Swanson is going deep a time or two this series, he's long overdue and has lately righted the ship.

[UMFan83]

29 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

It is fun to say that the Cubs are only 3 games out of a Wild Card spot, and they can use that to sell the fans and try to drive ticket sales, but their playoff possibilities remain dire.

I'm glad they are playing better baseball, but they still need to pass 4 teams to get into playoff position.  The Diamondbacks and Padres are both 7 games up, a huge deficit to make up over 43 games.  That leaves the 4 required teams as the Giants, Cardinals, Mets, and Braves.  Only one of those teams really scares me, but it is the Braves with a 3 game head start.

I think the Cubs are going to need to play well over a 60% winning percentage for the rest of the year to have a fighting chance.  If they can go 26-17 or better, maybe there's a chance the Braves play .500 baseball the rest of the year and the Cubs can sneak into the last playoff spot (assuming that none of the other 3 teams also win at a similar pace to the Cubs), but there is very little room for error.

 

Thats why I'm not spending any time thinking about the playoffs or following other team's games.  The season ended in my mind when they coughed up game after game after game earlier in the season and lost the tiebreaker to virtually every team.  Add to that it looks like the bar to make the playoffs is going to be multiple games higher this year so its just not worth it.

That doesn't mean I'm not having fun watching them play better, and of course theres a tiny part of me that keeps hoping they can get massively hot and make it, but I'm just not spending too much emotional energy thinking about it or worrying about it.

Edited August 12, 2024 by UMFan83

[Jason Ross]

It's one step at a time for me. They're within a game of .500. Let's get to that watermark first. 

Then you worry about jumping some of these teams in front of you, like the Giants and the Cardinals. 

Then you start worrying about the playoffs. 

This year has been an odd mirror image of last season. Last year it felt like most of the first part of the season, things were going as good as you could have hoped. Players were generally healthy, guys like Bellinger landed on their feet, and come the end of August, the team had a 90% chance to make the playoffs. Bad injury luck, coupled with negative variance and the team fell apart. Maybe this year we continue the inverse; we had the injuries early, the negative variance and the >10% chance of making the playoffs. We're starting to see guys come around. We're getting healthier. Who knows what the rest of the year brings? 

[Rcal10]

18 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Thats why I'm not spending any time thinking about the playoffs or following other team's games.  The season ended in my mind when they coughed up game after game after game earlier in the season and lost the tiebreaker to virtually every team.  Add to that it looks like the bar to make the playoffs is going to be multiple games higher this year so its just not worth it.

That doesn't mean I'm not having fun watching them play better, and of course theres a tiny part of me that keeps hoping they can get massively hot and make it, but I'm just not spending too much emotional energy thinking about it or worrying about it.

I’m not so sure 85 doesn’t get them in this year. 5 over is the bar right now. If each team plays 500 or 1 game o we that gives them 84 wins. I would like to see the Cubs at 86-87 wins, but that is a real tall order. But maybe 85 does get it done. 

[Stratos]

At the moment, with this recent winning push, i'm just grateful i have a reason to actually watch the games and keep a sliver of hope even though there's only like a 6% playoff odds right now.  This is exactly what Ricketts and the business wants and I'm a sucker in a way, but i've already bought my MLB.tv sub for the year so they aren't getting anything extra out of me...besides some Wrigley and on-air ad exposure.

[KCCub]

Hopefully Busch/Belli/Happ get a few up in the new wind tunnel at Progressive. 

Edited August 12, 2024 by KCCub

[PeanutPunch33]

Probably the first time in months I've actually been excited about a Cubs game 

[CubinNY]

Ben Brown shut down again. One of the strangest pitching injuries I can remember. 

[Eeyore]

Is Jose Ramirez a good candidate for Cooperstown?

https://www.fangraphs.com/players/jose-ramirez/13510/stats?position=3B

[CubinNY]

Naylor is having a good year but he’s put on a lot of weight. I mean a lot.

Edited August 12, 2024 by CubinNY

[JHBulls]

Happy birthday, Ian, 

[chibears55]

These next 12 games imo is big for the Cubs and could pretty much let us know if September baseball could be meaningful. 

If they can keep the good momentum going, play over 500 ball these next 12 and stay within striking distance for a WC spot, theyll have 10 more series to play and just 3 tough teams  in Yankees, Dodgers back to back and Phillies second to last series.

Gotta win series and avoid any 3+ games losing streaks.

[CubinNY]

Have a game Happer

[squally1313]

15 minutes ago, JHBulls said:

Happy birthday, Ian, 

And again. 

[CubinNY]

PCA with a dinger