Reds (Lodolo) vs Cubs (Soroka): 8/4/25, 7:05pm

[mul21]

Man, the Cubs are definitely getting shafted on matchups lately.  Lodolo, Littel and Abbott for us while the Brewers get the corpse of Erik Fedde, some dude with a 5.02 ERA, and Strider in their 3 games with the Braves on top of missing Gore against the Nats last weekend.

[gflore34]

Not, that the Cubs have been able to do anything with any sort of pitching, it still horsefeathers sucks they face Lodolo and Abbott while Brewers face a continued string lousy pitching.  Guess, the third game in Atlanta the Brewers are facing, for the first time in a week, a not so crappy starter in Strider.

[BigSlick]

i dont care if its beared out in the numbers or not, but i'm weirdly more confident about the cubs against good pitching than bad pitching

 

this is probably a form of silly cognitive bias where it "feels" worse if you don't score off bad pitching and feels less bad if its against good pitching. and my brain remembers when they do score off good pitching like they did in the Brewers opener. 

[Bertz]

15 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Are Soroka's third time through numbers uniquely bad or is he just getting the same penalty that most other pitchers get?

We've got a temporary problem of Rea and Soroka going back to back if Counsell is going to have tight leashes on both. If we're trying to our relievers going three games in four days, we're down Palencia, Keller, Kittredge, and Thielbar tonight. Pomeranz with 20 pitches yesterday is probably fine, and then you've got Brasier, Rogers, and whatever is going on with Ben Brown (hasn't pitched since last Sunday). The Reds lineup as laidout by the FG Depth Chart page seems pretty easy to gameplan for. Elly sucks against lefties so you can line up Rogers and Pomeranz against the top and let Brasier/Brown deal with the bottom. 

This is about as good as Lodolo has been (1.32/2.08/2.77 ERA/FIP/xFIP, 9.88 K/9, 0.66 BB/9 the last four starts including against the Dodgers, the Mets, and a hot Miami team) so this one might be tough. But we're also good, so we should go win. 

Yeah I suspect the plan is to start using Brown in bulk relief, and maybe Assad too.  That's a good way to mitigate the innings limitations with so much of the current rotation.

It'd be a really good day for the offense to flex its muscles and let Brown have a soft landing into long relief.

[Derwood]

Tucker has a .909 OPS over his last 7 games

[squally1313]

1 minute ago, Bertz said:

Yeah I suspect the plan is to start using Brown in bulk relief, and maybe Assad too.  That's a good way to mitigate the innings limitations with so much of the current rotation.

It'd be a really good day for the offense to flex its muscles and let Brown have a soft landing into long relief.

I'd love to see if you could (at least temporarily) try to turn Brown in a short relief monster. The K and BB numbers are a step in that direction. Seems redundant to carry three lefties in the pen, and we're theoretically going to have some combination of Rea, Soroka, Assad, Taillon, Wicks all around to slot into the 4-5 and long relief roles. 

[squally1313]

2 minutes ago, Derwood said:

Tucker has a .909 OPS over his last 7 games

Yeah I don't know if it's a $500m skill or whatever, but there's something really impressive about a clearly struggling guy still putting up a .365ish OBP in July. Pretty much everyone else (with the exception of maybe Hoerner)....when they slump, the floor is just so much lower. But Tucker just decides to put up a 25% walk rate and 2/1 BB/K ratio over the last two weeks until he figures out his swing/his finger gets better/whatever. 

[CubUgly]

24 minutes ago, 17 Seconds said:

how is he wrong?

Not saying he's wrong, that's subjective.  Just saying I'm still not feeling great about it - I was just thanking him for trying to make me feel better about it.

[PeanutPunch33]

It's time for the Cubs to get Amaya/Assad/Taillon back... having a team at full strength would help quite a bit.  I keep hearing they'll be back in August but hopefully it's not the end of August.  

Edited August 4, 2025 by PeanutPunch33

[UMFan83]

47 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

Brother, if you're going to do this at least set the same window of games/ABs for every player. If you do it this way you're personally cultivating the least Good window of production for everyone 

I’ve been doing this for years.  It’s just a way to show the length and depth of recent slumps. I'm not making grand claims about the players or the team, and I’m fully aware the endpoints are arbitrary. Baseball is full of streaks, good and bad, and eventually most guys hit again. This is just a snapshot of how rough it’s been lately, not a prediction or deep analysis, just a data dump.

Like, saying 'Seiya has a .494 OPS over his last 14 games' doesn’t mean that’s who he is, it just illustrates how cold he’s been in that stretch.

Edited August 4, 2025 by UMFan83

[BKHoo]

1 hour ago, Hot Sauce said:

No. Home/away splits are weird and mostly meaningless when it comes to hitters, unless those hitters play their home games at Coors. 

OK but when both are bad, they are not meaningless, it's just his home split is particularly bad. 

[BKHoo]

28 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Yeah I don't know if it's a $500m skill or whatever, but there's something really impressive about a clearly struggling guy still putting up a .365ish OBP in July. Pretty much everyone else (with the exception of maybe Hoerner)....when they slump, the floor is just so much lower. But Tucker just decides to put up a 25% walk rate and 2/1 BB/K ratio over the last two weeks until he figures out his swing/his finger gets better/whatever. 

I could not agree more - even when you notice him for what he is NOT doing, he still produces compared to other players when slumping. 

[squally1313]

4 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

 

I’ve been doing this for years.  It’s just a way to show the length and depth of recent slumps. I'm not making grand claims about the players or the team, and I’m fully aware the endpoints are arbitrary. Baseball is full of streaks, good and bad, and eventually most guys hit again. This is just a snapshot of how rough it’s been lately, not a prediction or deep analysis, just a data dump.

Like, saying 'Seiya has a .494 OPS over his last 14 games' doesn’t mean that’s who he is, it just illustrates how cold he’s been in that stretch.

I get the theory behind it, but it starts to strain a little bit when you use a 9 game sample for Carson Kelly to show he's in a slump, but, for example, Kyle Tucker has a 144 wRC over his last 9 games. Like, in Carson Kelly's last 27 games, he has a 152 wRC. I don't think you can claim both are 'currently' slumping in this scenario. 

[UMFan83]

1 minute ago, squally1313 said:

I get the theory behind it, but it starts to strain a little bit when you use a 9 game sample for Carson Kelly to show he's in a slump, but, for example, Kyle Tucker has a 144 wRC over his last 9 games. Like, in Carson Kelly's last 27 games, he has a 152 wRC. I don't think you can claim both are 'currently' slumping in this scenario. 

fair

[Stratos]

2 hours ago, KCCub said:

As long as we get this close to this guy moving forwards, he'll be a solid get:

As pointed out, fastball velo today will be something to monitor.

I went through his starts this year. He was. 94-95 towards the start of the season, then sat 92-93 for June/July, then the last 2-3 starts has at times dipped down to 89-90.

Will be interesting to see him today.

[Stratos]

22 minutes ago, PeanutPunch33 said:

It's time for the Cubs to get Amaya/Assad/Taillon back... having a team at full strength would help quite a bit.  I keep hearing they'll be back in August but hopefully it's not the end of August.  

They're saying more mid-Aug.  Taillon has already made a start in Iowa.

[Hot Sauce]

6 minutes ago, BKHoo said:

OK but when both are bad, they are not meaningless, it's just his home split is particularly bad. 

He’s had 279 MLB plate appearances. If you had specific expectations, that’s on you. It appears more like you are searching for something that justifies your criticism.

[gflore34]

1 hour ago, mul21 said:

Man, the Cubs are definitely getting shafted on matchups lately.  Lodolo, Littel and Abbott for us while the Brewers get the corpse of Erik Fedde, some dude with a 5.02 ERA, and Strider in their 3 games with the Braves on top of missing Gore against the Nats last weekend.

Feels as if it's been this way all season, very rarely have the Cubs missed the opposition' best starters.  Think I read they'll miss Skenes when they face the Pirates, which, I believe, will be the first time the Cubs have missed a Skenes start since he came up.  Not too worried about Littell, appears he doesn't miss many bats and has given up 26 HR in 133 IP, haven't looked at the splits.  The high HR total may be a function of where TB has played homes.

Edited August 4, 2025 by gflore34

[Bertz]

11 minutes ago, Stratos said:

They're saying more mid-Aug.  Taillon has already made a start in Iowa.

Assad's second start with Iowa is I believe lined up for tomorrow as well.  I think it's reasonable to expect both guys back as early as the Pittsburgh series next weekend.

And then Amaya got a bunch of at bats last week but hasn't caught a 9 inning game yet.  So he probably joins the team in STL this weekend?

[squally1313]

24 minutes ago, Hot Sauce said:

He’s had 279 MLB plate appearances. If you had specific expectations, that’s on you. It appears more like you are searching for something that justifies your criticism.

Yep. Also, picking today to criticize Shaw, when he went like 0/79 in early July, then got a week off to reset and work on things, and has since gone 326/340/674 in 47 PAs is pretty weird timing. 

(alright I get it, this selective sample size thing is fun)

Edited August 4, 2025 by squally1313

[Jason Ross]

2 hours ago, gflore34 said:

He couldn't square up any of the meatballs he saw Saturday.  Even on consecutive pitches, Friday though, he did hit balls with >= 100 EV.  Offensively he's definitely under performed even modest expectations, don't believe there's much of an argument there, with the glove, I'd say he's over performed modest expectations.

wOBA: .282
xwOBA: .305
League 3b wOBA: .307

I'm not sure he's underperformed so much as he's been the recipient of poor batted ball variance. Part of what is happening more recently stems from change, but part of this is that he's always been unlucky and some balls that weren't dropping are more frequently.

[UMFan83]

4 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Yep. Also, picking today to criticize Shaw, when he went like 0/79 in early July, then got a week off to reset and work on things, and has since gone 326/340/674 in 47 PAs is pretty weird timing. 

(alright I get it, this selective sample size thing is fun)

Don Draper voice (via ChatGPT): 

You can tell any story you want about a baseball player. All it takes is choosing the right starting point. Pick a 15-game hot streak and he's a future Hall of Famer. Highlight a cold stretch and suddenly he's a bust. That’s not analysis, it’s authorship. You’re not uncovering truth, you’re shaping perception.

People want numbers to confirm what they already believe. They want to feel smart, justified, certain. So we slice the data to fit the narrative. A slump sells panic, a streak sells hope. The illusion is that it’s objective, because there’s a stat behind it. But it’s still a sales job.

Baseball is full of streaks, full of noise. The truth is always messier than the story we tell. But the story is what sticks.

[gflore34]

6 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Don Draper voice (via ChatGPT): 

You can tell any story you want about a baseball player. All it takes is choosing the right starting point. Pick a 15-game hot streak and he's a future Hall of Famer. Highlight a cold stretch and suddenly he's a bust. That’s not analysis, it’s authorship. You’re not uncovering truth, you’re shaping perception.

People want numbers to confirm what they already believe. They want to feel smart, justified, certain. So we slice the data to fit the narrative. A slump sells panic, a streak sells hope. The illusion is that it’s objective, because there’s a stat behind it. But it’s still a sales job.

Baseball is full of streaks, full of noise. The truth is always messier than the story we tell. But the story is what sticks.

This aligns with development of a players in any sport, we'd like to see a linear ascension.  When, in reality, the curve towards being good looks like something drawn with a spirograph.

[Outshined_One]

This board is going to be insufferable next year when Owen Caissie starts his career hitting .079 with eighty million Ks in his first 50 plate appearances.

[gflore34]

7 minutes ago, Outshined_One said:

This board is going to be insufferable next year when Owen Caissie starts his career hitting .079 with eighty million Ks in his first 50 plate appearances.

It'd be tough to watch, hopefully, they'll be light at the end of the tunnel for Cassie.