Rockies (Lorenzen) vs Cubs (Imanaga): 6/15/26, 7:05pm

[BKHoo]

We sort of deserved to win that game and didn’t deserve it at all - at the same time. 

Edited yesterday at 02:20 PM by BKHoo

[CubUgly]

2 minutes ago, BKHoo said:

We sort of deserved to win that game and didn’t deserve it all - at the same time. 

Scoring one run in each of the two outings vs. Lorenzon is not acceptable.  But we did make amends off their bullpen....well kinda.  Pete getting picked off in the 7th and Happ and Nico whiffing with the bases loaded was really bad baseball. 

[Derwood]

The Rockies bullpen out-Maton'd Maton

[Derwood]

If the season ended today, the Cubs would be in the playoffs.

[bryzz0brist]

10 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

This is why people were acting like we were down....we all felt it coming.

Looks like a W to me 😄

[cl smooth]

PCA is 14th in all-star voting for outfielders?!

[BKHoo]

Thielbar has to be outside of the circle of trust now, right? 

Edited yesterday at 02:15 PM by BKHoo

[BKHoo]

3 minutes ago, cl smooth said:

PCA is 14th in all-star voting for outfielders?!

Considering he is first in the NL in WAR for position players - that’s makes a lot of sense. 

[Bertz]

Matt Shaw since last year's All Star Break has a 121 wRC+ in 318 PAs

[We Got The Whole 9]

Since the Dodgers series Pete has a 3.3 fwar (44 games!) Kurtz is 2nd with 2.6. He finished that series at a 76 wRC+, 65th in war. In the time since he's hit 172, good for 7th. He's absolutely unbelievable. 

[BKHoo]

When his OPS is above 800, with his defense, that’s elite. 

[mul21]

10 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Matt Shaw since last year's All Star Break has a 121 wRC+ in 318 PAs

I'm all for seeing a lot more of him and Pedro in the lineup.  Someone needs to diagnose Dansby with Mike Olt disease and IL him for a month.

Edited yesterday at 02:10 PM by mul21

[squally1313]

The one silver lining with Dansby, which somewhat goes against the grain of what you'd expect, is that his defense is seemingly back to being Elite. The under the hood offensive stuff looks terrible, which is where you have to separate him from Nico, but if this was just the Age Cliff you'd think it would also show itself in being a step slow in the field, and that doesn't seem to be the case. His arm strength is actually up this year.

Who knows, it could be sample size. Seeing a similar situation with Suzuki, though not as extreme, in that he's gone from being a near-elite hitter to just a pretty good one, but his defense has rebounded to keep his overall value up. 

Bregman's offensive struggles have been overblown due to his total incompetence in high leverage situations. You probably don't want to paying $35m for the profile, but league average hitter (99 wRC, league average at 3B is 94) with good defense at 3B isn't some black hole.

PCA is a superstar, Busch is a stud, Nico is Nico, Happ is Happ, (shrug) at the catching spot. 

[Clem Fandango]

31 minutes ago, BKHoo said:

Considering he is first in the NL in WAR for position players - that’s makes a lot of sense. 

First in MLB now. 

[Bertz]

10 minutes ago, mul21 said:

I'm all for seeing a lot more of him and Pedro in the lineup.  Someone needs to diagnose Dansby with Mike Olt disease and IL him for a month.

Dansby's probably fine.  He's always been hella streaky and there's nothing in his profile currently that screams broken.  But yeah the results right now are atrocious and we're pretty flush with quality alternatives.  I'd probably drop him down into a rotation with the kids and make him fight for his everyday spot back.

[muntjack]

19 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Dansby's probably fine.  He's always been hella streaky and there's nothing in his profile currently that screams broken.  But yeah the results right now are atrocious and we're pretty flush with quality alternatives.  I'd probably drop him down into a rotation with the kids and make him fight for his everyday spot back.

I mean, this isn't great...

[Bertz]

4 minutes ago, muntjack said:

I mean, this isn't great...

I mean I said the results have been atrocious?

When someone full-on breaks, think Yan Gomes his second year with us, there are generally obvious tells.  But for Dansby:

- His contact numbers are fine, down just a smidge

- His chase numbers are fine, up just a smidge

- His groundball rate is normal

- His bat speed is normal, and to Squally's point his sprint speed and arm strength are too.  So there doesn't appear to be a physicality issue

So it doesn't look like an injury or a case of getting old.  He's just been bad. My amateur diagnosis is he's caught in between, fouling off good pitches to hit instead of driving them.  Doesn't look fully broken IMO.

[squally1313]

13 minutes ago, muntjack said:

I mean, this isn't great...

Yeah his batted ball metrics have fallen off a cliff. Having said that, at some point, the Dansby discussion at least somewhat turns into a 'do we trust the value of defense' discussion. Like, should we bench the guy who is 10th in baseball in fWAR for shortstops? No, almost certainly not. But that requires a pretty firm belief in the importance of his glove at short vs Nico there/Pedro or Shaw at second. 

[Rcal10]

2 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Yeah his batted ball metrics have fallen off a cliff. Having said that, at some point, the Dansby discussion at least somewhat turns into a 'do we trust the value of defense' discussion. Like, should we bench the guy who is 10th in baseball in fWAR for shortstops? No, almost certainly not. But that requires a pretty firm belief in the importance of his glove at short vs Nico there/Pedro or Shaw at second. 

I think what CC is doing now is fine. Play him, but also give him a day or two to sit down. And when you play him don’t be afraid to PH for him late in a game. His defense is valuable. As you said, his fWAR is 10th among SS. But he has to start hitting too. 

[Jason Ross]

Squally and Bertz said it better than I could, but I did just want to say that I'm in this camp as well. If you want something mechanical? I think his swing is off. Look below:

This is a swing breakdown. He's late, tied up, and his bat is under the ball on fastballs; but here's the thing - this is normal for him. What the issue is, however, is that he's way early on breaking balls right now 

This is last year. Pay attention specifically to the middle chart. Notice how there are essentially two peaks for Swanson on green and blue? These are breaking balls and off speed. He's super early on them and it's not a normal curve.

This is a processing issue. My guess? He's in his head, and he's pressing. His LA is also super high right now. I think this is a hitter in the throes of a slump. Not someone entirely broken or dead due to age.

[Dfan25]

They should IL Nico for a couple of weeks and let him clear his head . Ever since he got hit , he has been atrocious . Let Pedro play 2B . They should IL Swanson for 3 months as well . 

[We Got The Whole 9]

6 minutes ago, Dfan25 said:

They should IL Nico for a couple of weeks and let him clear his head . Ever since he got hit , he has been atrocious . Let Pedro play 2B . They should IL Swanson for 3 months as well . 

So Shaw at short?

[UMFan83]

1 hour ago, squally1313 said:

The one silver lining with Dansby, which somewhat goes against the grain of what you'd expect, is that his defense is seemingly back to being Elite. The under the hood offensive stuff looks terrible, which is where you have to separate him from Nico, but if this was just the Age Cliff you'd think it would also show itself in being a step slow in the field, and that doesn't seem to be the case. His arm strength is actually up this year.

Who knows, it could be sample size. Seeing a similar situation with Suzuki, though not as extreme, in that he's gone from being a near-elite hitter to just a pretty good one, but his defense has rebounded to keep his overall value up. 

Bregman's offensive struggles have been overblown due to his total incompetence in high leverage situations. You probably don't want to paying $35m for the profile, but league average hitter (99 wRC, league average at 3B is 94) with good defense at 3B isn't some black hole.

PCA is a superstar, Busch is a stud, Nico is Nico, Happ is Happ, (shrug) at the catching spot. 

Yeah it's wild that he is on pace for like a 2.2 win season despite being on the worst hitters in baseball.  That said, he's one of the worst hitters in baseball.  I find myself counting how many spots we are away from 9th in the order because we know that's almost an auto out.

I will say about Dansby is that he's always been insanely streaky as a hitter.  For instance, in 2023 he had a 35 game stretch where he hit .281/.347/.563/.910.  His OPS for the year was over .800 and his contract looked like a steal.  He then proceeded to hit .204/.287/.333/.620 the last 50 games of the year as the Cubs fell apart and missed the playoffs by 1 game.  At that point I was reading Braves fans discussions about Dansby and saw a lot of mention of how he's one of the streakiest hitters they've ever seen. 

Granted:

1) we're talking about his age 29 season vs. age 32 season
2) this stretch is longer and worse than the example I gave
3) I don't know if the underlying numbers during his 2023 slump were bad or if there was a luck component to it.

But hopefully the fact that he's extremely streaky means that he's due for some sort of hot streak (relatively speaking) and we can end the discussions about whether he should even be playing because all it takes is like a 90 OPS+ for him to be extremely valuable to us with how he's playing defensively.

Edited yesterday at 03:46 PM by UMFan83

[Cubs420psd]

1 hour ago, mul21 said:

I'm all for seeing a lot more of him and Pedro in the lineup.  Someone needs to diagnose Dansby with Mike Olt disease and IL him for a month.

What about Nico? Hes been damn near as bad.

 

I actually think Nico might be hurt, though. I don't think i've ever seen him look this bad. His last at bat last night was pathetic. He swung at a ball two feet out of the zone that's not Nico like.

 

I wish Shaw was a little more sound at SS. Because if he was, I would give him and Ramirez a lot of run over the next couple weeks.

Edited yesterday at 03:53 PM by Cubs420psd

[We Got The Whole 9]

17 minutes ago, Cubs420psd said:

What about Nico? Hes been damn near as bad.

 

I actually think Nico might be hurt, though. I don't think i've ever seen him look this bad. His last at bat last night was pathetic. He swung at a ball two feet out of the zone that's not Nico like.

 

I wish Shaw was a little more sound at SS. Because if he was, I would give him and Ramirez a lot of run over the next couple weeks.

Nico's approach drives me insane. Sometimes it feels like the zone he's looking in is the zone in which he is likely to do the least amount of damage.

 

I would trade his 90% contact rate for a 20% chase rate all day every day.