Sammy Sofa

Though the dude wandering around wearing an old timey Cubs uniform and corpse makeup so that he was some kind of baseball zombie was pretty cool.

A fratbro who is gay. It seems pretty self-explanatory. I think of fratbro culture as being pretty hostile towards homosexuality (at least in the open, weird pledge horsefeathers obviously happens behind closed doors) Just caught me off guard.. But is the gay fratbro somehow worse than straight fratbro? Indubitably. He gets to be the absolute worst, most obnoxious version of more than one culture. This guy was alternating between countering the drunk ladyfriend's tales of shrimpy dink woe by bragging as loudly as possible about how his dude is rocking almost 10 inches and how he could handle it like a pro no matter how drunk he got, and then even more loudly trying to pick a fight with a guy down the aisle seemingly for having the audacity for getting out of his seat and having to pass by one time too many.

A fratbro who is gay. It seems pretty self-explanatory.

Well, maybe THIS version... ACCURATE. Expected Nellie, but I guess that’s too far That's if the season is in danger of ending under .500.

Well, maybe THIS version... ACCURATE.

So, hey, it only took 15 tries to between the start of 2016 and now for me to finally see the Cubs have an easy laugher of a win (though my record is a downright 2019 Cubsian 4-11)! Who would have thought it would be THIS team, with Lester having to leave the game super early, and Rizzo-Baez-Contreras having 9 k's between them? Baseball is weird. Also the first Home Opener I've been to in about 20 years that I can remember not being just absolutely miserable weather-wise. Though the insanely drunk woman behind me with the cartoon baby voice having WAY too loud a conversation with her gay fratbro (PS: these guys are the WORST) BFF about how her new-ish husband only has a 4 incher was an...interesting bonus.

This just makes me wish Creed was the manager instead of Joe. Only if Pam is there to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid. I think the real answer is to find a Pam for Joe. They had one, but he transferred to the DC branch, and it turns out he actually sucks as a boss.

(That also could be applied to Creed: the band)

This just makes me wish Creed was the manager instead of Joe.

One of the most shameless (and pointless) of the, "oh, Obama did this? Well, then I must do the opposite"-moves.

Judas, you are up if Brian707 is a no show by 10-ish.

That wasn't terrible!

OH NO 4 BALLS.

OH NO A BALL.

Personally, I think it would have taken a couple of those guys and then some prospects, and I would have been than fine with the main duo being any combination of them. Now, I'm a baseball idiot, but I don't think any pair of those guys being replaced the Yelich puts the 2018 Cubs at the same or worse than they were in 2017. I think the most valuable pairing at the time would have been Baez and Contreras, and a FO supposedly as ahead of the curve as this one should have been really horsefeathering aware early on that between catchers typically having a pretty short shelf life AND Contreras needs to hit a ton to offset his framing that he was a prime sell high candidate. Instead we just have him and horsefeathers AND the current horsefeathering OF, which feels insane to type. How have they horsefeathering botched so many aspects of this team SO spectacularly in such a short frame of time? You wanted to trade Javy and Contreras for Yelich coming out of 2017? I don't think I ever didn't want to trade Baez before Russell completely imploded. But no, I clearly never said that I was championing the idea of trading those specific guys for Yelich back in 2017. I DID really want the Cubs to trade for Yelich, and while I would have been very surprised at the time if they had traded Contreras for him, hindsight shows that's the kind of thing that I wish the FO was willing and able to do. I just don't get how they seem to have been on board with the whole "framing is actually really, REALLY valuable" thing from early on, yet decided to go all in on Contreras as their starting catcher seemingly on the basis of his bat carrying him, when plenty of teams have been getting comparable or better value from that position from guys who can't hit worth a damn. So, yeah, at this point I wish they had traded him, or that they had tried to move him to a different position (especially since I think they knew they weren't actually going after Harper for a while).

BPs projection system says that, which seems like a ridiculous amount of weight to put on framing. I do think it’s important and Willy needs to get better (early indications are he is) and agree with the things you mentioned as things I’ve noticed too. Our staff of soft tossing MF’ers who can’t command probably doesn’t help either. You can only frame so well when you set up in one quadrant and your pitchers are missing in the complete opposite one. Ah, gotcha; I was going by Fangraphs. But yeah, good point about the pitchers the FO has gone after; I think Contreras' framing would be more serviceable if they hadn't inexplicably bucked the trend of stocking bullpens with power arms and went with control/finesse/spin rate/groundball/whatever the horsefeathers guys instead. If stuff that just has me baffled; there's zero chance the FO weren't aware of his catching issues, but they clearly decided to go all in on him, so why mostly go after pitchers who would HUGELY benefit from a good or great framer?

Error upon error! #thatssocub

I wonder if there's anything to the idea that catchers would clearly benefit from more time in the minors than pretty much all of the other positions.

Wait, who is saying that about either guys? But yeah, I do think it is basically THE most critical part of the position. Now, whether it's being tracked accurately, I don't know. My own dumbed down take is that Contreras moves his glove/arm way too much when catching and it screws up a ton of calls.

Well, at this point we pretty much have to hope you're right.

The balls of this org to willfully put THIS team out there right before they try to launch a TV network. Holy horsefeathers. That's astonishing.

And to me, that highlights how much they got blindsided by just how much framing matters. There was some kind of disconnect or something, because they obviously weren't unaware of it, but I think they were behind the curve. If Miguel Montero can be as valuable as he was (and I know those Fangraph numbers have been revised), than there's no reason to hold onto an obviously seriously flawed catcher like Contreras just because he swings a decent bat at a position where guys are lucky to last long, and that's the kind of thing I would hope and expect this FO would beat most everyone else to. It's all hindsight now, but it's too bad they missed the window where you could get great inflated value for a guy like Contreras as a catcher. At this point I'd rather they try and make him a corner OF, or maybe 3B. Ugh; what a mess.

Personally, I think it would have taken a couple of those guys and then some prospects, and I would have been than fine with the main duo being any combination of them. Now, I'm a baseball idiot, but I don't think any pair of those guys being replaced the Yelich puts the 2018 Cubs at the same or worse than they were in 2017. I think the most valuable pairing at the time would have been Baez and Contreras, and a FO supposedly as ahead of the curve as this one should have been really horsefeathering aware early on that between catchers typically having a pretty short shelf life AND Contreras needs to hit a ton to offset his framing that he was a prime sell high candidate. Instead we just have him and fuckingCaratini AND the current horsefeathering OF, which feels insane to type. How have they horsefeathering botched so many aspects of this team SO spectacularly in such a short frame of time?

We also don’t know what the ask was, it’s entirely possible there just wasn’t really a fit or the ask was like Javy, Happ or Willy and other stuff (which I can understand not doing that). Yeah, and I also think Lewis Brinson was more highly regraded than the Happs of the world and would have taken more of the Javy types. Javy types SHOULD net you someone like Yelich. Being in the Cubs' position and instead relying on Javy types is something I just don't understand.