Sammy Sofa

and also kill duensing can you imagine how horsefeathers up it would be to be dumpy old brian duensing and have the one thing you're remotely good at in life be "being a part of the small population of left handed people who is part of the even smaller group of lefthanded people who can throw curveballs to the even smaller portion of people who bat left handed" and then read online where some dumbass is like "he should be murdered" and other people are liking the post like "yes i agree, murder is a fitting outcome for him." All fans of everything are terrible. We should be marched off of a cliff.

You're acting like he didn't have a great season the year before or any time before his STL season. I'm obviously not bullish on Heyward moving forward (which sucks, because I was a huge fan of signing him) but it's not like the Cubs were the only team who thought he'd be good. He was a 4 win guy in 2014 because of defense - his slugging that year was lower than it was in 2018 or 2017. He's had 3 good offensive years, two were before the injuries and one was the weird cardinals season where he hit .293 randomly. If you think he's hitting .293 again, i think you're setting yourself up for disappointment. The whole signing looks worse and worse for the FO as time goes on. Like, it's not like any of this stuff was any kind of secret, yet they seemingly went all in on him more just to spite the Cardinals as opposed to actually signing someone who looked like they were going to be a reliably valuable baseball player.

Bryant not being healthy wasn't the only problem they had offensively, and it's not going to be the only problem going forward.

He also funked his shoulder up in Atlanta and his swing has never looked the same. The cardinals season was a flukish BA, a home run off arrieta and defensive efficiency he won’t approach anymore admit he ages. He’s a 2 WAR guy who might get to 3 with BABIP luck since he doesn’t strike out. Any details on the Heyward shoulder injury? He has degenerative back stuff, and strained his shoulder or something in, what, like his 2nd or 3rd season? And then Chipper was a dick (shocker) and called him out for not playing through the pain.

I also threw this out there a couple times and I don't think I ever got a reply; to my dimwit eyes, I thought he looked at least reasonably promising.

I'm also getting more and more onboard with the idea of bullpen-ing it as much as possible. I'd still like to add one more starter just to have some depth, but beyond that and Harper or Machado, just amp up the bullpen numbers and see what sticks. And start pushing what few pitching prospects they have into the bullpen sooner rather than later.

Stew in your hot goss here, you filthy reprobates.

Man, if that means Chili gets to stick around for another year, too...

Heyward hurt his wrist in between the 2015 and 2016 seasons? He also funked his shoulder up in Atlanta and his swing has never looked the same. The cardinals season was a flukish BA, a home run off arrieta and defensive efficiency he won’t approach anymore admit he ages. He’s a 2 WAR guy who might get to 3 with BABIP luck since he doesn’t strike out. So we'll have a matching set between him and Bryant. How adorable.

They can play "small ball" fine; they ranked right near the top with their team average and OBP. Lack of power was the glaring problem. It's not like they weren't getting a bunch of guys on base in a lot of those games where they only scored 0 or 1 run. Speed is something, IMO, that should have almost next to nothing to do with their offensive approach outside of, "don't have guys as slow as Daniel Murphy."

Yeah, Bote sucks. Whatever; who cares. But man, the other two just really make me wonder what happened, and how did the Cubs get it SO wrong? The completely fail to turn Heyward into the dongsmith everyone hoped he could be and wreck him for life...and then seemingly try to turn everyone into scrappy singles slappers? What the horsefeathers? Mallee and Davis (and, probably, Joe) are horsefeathering monsters. Almora has always been a tweener between AAA-quality and MLB quality. That's just how draft picks go sometimes. Heyward hurt his wrist and sometimes you hurt a key joint and you can never swing a bat the same again. Sorry, Kris. Heyward hurt his wrist in between the 2015 and 2016 seasons?

Yeah, Bote sucks. Whatever; who cares. But man, the other two just really make me wonder what happened, and how did the Cubs get it SO wrong? The completely fail to turn Heyward into the dongsmith everyone hoped he could be and wreck him for life...and then seemingly try to turn everyone into scrappy singles slappers? What the horsefeathers? Mallee and Davis (and, probably, Joe) are horsefeathering monsters.

If Zobrist is back next year, he's perfect to lead off when he's in the lineup. Besides that, if they do sign Harper, really any combo of him, Rizzo and Bryant going 1-2-3 when Zobrist isn't in is likely the best option. No need for them to chase something like a "leadoff hitter."

The Cubs' team slugging numbers didn't shift THAT much between last year and this year for it to arguably be the result of much more than Bryant, Russell and Contreras being such disappointments in that regard...but still, it just seems SO glaring. And combined with FORTY games where they scored 1 or 0 runs... This is a truly perplexing 95-win team. To also be so hapless for long stretches without power, or just scoring at all. And then the weird ongoing stuff with stranding guys in scoring position with less then 2 outs. This team should just be varying degrees of a hitting beast, even with injuries and long stretches without off days, not a conglomerate of slap-hitting and walks with the occasional power stroke. Something is wrong there.

I’m ok with this. Gore is not going to do anything. Might as well see if Bryant can end it with a dong. It’s a long shot, but so is Gore doing anything productive with the bat. i think bryant’s hr rate on sliders low and out of the strike zone is probably like -40. And that's when he's actually hitting like normal Bryant.

No, the idea would be to leverage Rizzo into helping make improvements throughout the roster. Realistically, I don't think it's possible, but this isn't a strong 1st base market, and there's several teams that could look to upgrade. I don't love the constant lineup machinations, so if you could construct a deal where Rizzo nets you two key assets, and then subsequently move Schwarber to first, I don't know if it's the worst idea. To put it into a bit more specificity, say you could land a starting OF/top of the order type hitter and a 2nd baseman for Rizzo, both guys being relatively young-ish (that is, we aren't talking about 30+ year old guys) would you do it? If you could lop in Bryce Harper after that ... Again, I don't think it will happen, but it has nothing to do with last night's loss. wtf lol this isn't baseball mogul. Anyway. You gotta prioritize one of the two bats. If you get one of them, preferably harper, our floor is probably "really good" offense and our ceiling (bryant and contreras bouncing back) is super elite. Plus if there's enough teams out there looking to spend to try and upgrade 1B, then it would make more sense to try and sell them Schwaber as a 1B than for the Cubs to move Rizzo and then gamble on Schwarber as an everyday 1B themselves.

The hell? I'm not opposed at all to the idea of moving Rizzo in the right circumstances; the part that really jumps out at me is "Schwaber's bounce back season." The dude's...fine. As a platoon player. He didn't really do anything to show he should or needs to be in the lineup almost every day, which he'd have to do to effectively replace Rizzo.

Thanks. Wish we could have ridden a few more streaks. Those records are pretty ugly!

It's not hard to find a manager that players like; players have mostly loved playing for Dusty over the years, so I think it's overstating things to think that Joe is special in regards to creating an environment that draws players in, or makes them want to stick around. I think it was obviously the right move to do what they did to get Joe given the collection of players they had in the stages of their careers they were in, but at this point I'm not really worried about whether they have the right guy for the party planning committee. His approach to the Russell situation is garbage, his constant lineup tweaking is practically useless besides an ongoing exercise in too clever for the room wankery, he can't manage a bullpen, and his input in putting together a coaching staff is beyond suspect at this point. I have zero problem with them going with someone else; I'm confident they wouldn't go with some kind of meatball, regressive dork or a Girardi-like hardass. Try for a new approach to try and better maximize what they have. The guys who gushed over Dusty were veterans and many past-their-prime guys who got a ton of playing time. Let’s not understate how many positive reviews Joe gets from the entire 25-man roster. Players like playing for Dusty, for better or for worse; it's not a veterans-only thing. Acting like Joe is this rare bird in terms of players getting behind him isn't realistic at all.

Absolutely. So many free agents want to come here now because of the culture he's built. The camaraderie and how close the players are in this clubhouse is special. I'm glad Jesse Chavez feels that way. Yup and sure it’s more than Joe, it’s the amenities, character of the players here and the FO’s doings as well but they’ve trusted Joe to guide and oversee it all. The wrong manager with all this still could make it a spot guys don’t want to be. It's not hard to find a manager that players like; players have mostly loved playing for Dusty over the years, so I think it's overstating things to think that Joe is special in regards to creating an environment that draws players in, or makes them want to stick around. I think it was obviously the right move to do what they did to get Joe given the collection of players they had in the stages of their careers they were in, but at this point I'm not really worried about whether they have the right guy for the party planning committee. His approach to the Russell situation is garbage, his constant lineup tweaking is practically useless besides an ongoing exercise in too clever for the room wankery, he can't manage a bullpen, and his input in putting together a coaching staff is beyond suspect at this point. I have zero problem with them going with someone else; I'm confident they wouldn't go with some kind of meatball, regressive dork or a Girardi-like hardass. Try for a new approach to try and better maximize what they have.

Because we're still going to be giddy over Maddon and his band of dingbats getting the boot?

I bet Khalil Greene would lead this team in dongs. Somewhere out there, meph just popped a halfie and doesn’t know why.

yes. clock is just over 11 minutes on the review now

I bet Khalil Greene would lead this team in dongs.

Man, they're so good at getting guys on base, and then so bad at doing anything with them.