Sammy Sofa

Man; I got up to use the bathroom and refill a water bottle and this AB is STILL going.

I really don't give a horsefeathers what Russell's overall statistical value is; all-glove players are even lamer than the shift.

horsefeathers, I don't think the Cubs have 3 starters right now that even stack up to the 2016 Indians, and I think their bullpen would end up easily as cooked at minimum if they tried to bullpen it for a deep run this season. Hendricks is likely their best option, and he's essentially 2016 Bauer. Yeeeeeesh. The Cubs basically need Yu to come back as Classic Yu. We obviously don't have a Corey Kluber, but Tomlin was and always has been hot garbage, and this was back when Bauer was trying to pitch with 3.5 fingers. It's obviously past the point of worrisome that none of Lester/Hendricks/Quintana has shown much sign of a rebound to career norms and we're coming up on the middle of August, but I'd take the best two of those three and Yu to line up against the Indians three. The difference in bullpens is obviously that they had an Andrew Miller who could go multiple innings and dominate (he pitched the second most innings in the playoffs for Cleveland), whereas we have 3-5 guys who would probably be considered better than anyone else Cleveland had in the bullpen. It's going to fall on Maddon to press the right buttons multiple times in a game if we're going to need 4-5 innings out of the bullpen. Given his history....that's pretty concerning. Dammit. You had me feeling a lot better until the end there.

isn't the pitcher basically hitting 9th whenever Russell plays? I'd rather some combination of Zobrist, Heyward and/or Baez bat in front of Rizzo instead of Russell/pitcher Yeah, Baez ostensibly SHOULD be able to hack it as a middle of the order guy, but he's such a weird baseball freak that who knows. Give me Heyward-Zobrist-Rizzo-Baez 1-2-3-4 more often than not.

Man, normally I'd PH in that situation, but all of the bench options are ass. Shoulda left Hendricks in.

Nice.

Interesting. Thanks for pulling that. 3-4 in games starters went under 5 innings, but were 3-1 going in to the WS by my count (4-4 and 4-1 if you include Drone Boys bloody finger game). And those last 3 WS games vs us they went under 5 IP the SP were going on short rest, I believe. They weren't in the DS/CS games. horsefeathers, I don't think the Cubs have 3 starters right now that even stack up to the 2016 Indians, and I think their bullpen would end up easily as cooked at minimum if they tried to bullpen it for a deep run this season. Hendricks is likely their best option, and he's essentially 2016 Bauer. Yeeeeeesh. The Cubs basically need Yu to come back as Classic Yu.

Yowza. It never fails to boggle my teensy-tiny brain how high this team ranks in offensive stats (minus dongs). There's some kind of willful Trump supporter-like disconnect that is making me refuse to believe it.

Interesting. Thanks for pulling that.

And someone reassure me that the Indians really did "bullpen it." My perception is they had good starters AND a good bullpen that allowed them to go to it comfortably to start the 6th, and not routinely having to rely on the latter to bail out the former after just 4 innings on a regular basis.

You're a braver person than I am. Dude is still giving essentially a dong a game. Today has all the makings of a '18 Hendricks Special: go 5-6 innings, giving up 3 runs and netting a half dozen k's so that at first glance it looks like a plain ol' QS and that he's not That Bad, despite having put his team down right away yet again and basically pitching from back on his heels the entire time. Like, it's not bad, but it's really not good, either, especially when that's really what he's showing is his realistic best case scenario. Oh I agree. It’s far from ideal but I can live with it and think we can still win games and he still can shut teams down as he’s shown a few times recently. My hope is Chavez, Monty, Smyly, Hamels (whoever is in the pen as longish guys in playoffs) are ready to come in right away and these SP have short leashes so like right now I’d hope one of those guys are ready to go come the 4/5th inning here if Hendricks allows a guy or two (maybe someone like Kintzler or Strop come in, in the inning then you go to a long guy for ~2ish innings). Again, I'd feel better if this was the anticipated plan for Hendricks and maybe one other starter instead of seemingly all of them. And the starers' propensity to give up runs from the jump really undercuts being able to swing to the bullpen to avoid them running into real trouble; the Cubs' starters are seemingly in some degree of trouble right from the beginning of the game far too often.

His point still stands: Hendricks has been just OK since then and he's now the anchor by default. That's not good. If post-SF Hendricks was expected to be, say, the 3rd best starter the Cubs have? Great! Eh, I’m fine with him being our game 1 starter/best playoff option. Hopefully some of Lester, Q, Hamels, Yu rise above him though. You're a braver person than I am. Dude is still giving essentially a dong a game. Today has all the makings of a '18 Hendricks Special: go 5-6 innings, giving up 3 runs and netting a half dozen k's so that at first glance it looks like a plain ol' QS and that he's not That Bad, despite having put his team down right away yet again and basically pitching from back on his heels the entire time. Like, it's not bad, but it's really not good, either, especially when that's really what he's showing is his realistic best case scenario.

Since that start in San Franciso where he claimed he found something he’s been mostly quite good His point still stands: Hendricks has been just OK since then and he's now the anchor by default. That's not good. If post-SF Hendricks was expected to be, say, the 3rd best starter the Cubs have? Great!

Yeah, every starter they began the year with is some varying level of disappointing to disaster to dead right now.

"Spencer Kieboom?" That totally sounds like a poorly made up on the spot name.

I get that it's my simple lizard brain that wants the Cubs to be sitting better than 21st in horsefeathering dongs in all of baseball, but I really think it would be more enjoyable if it didn't feel like SUCH an uphill battle to score a leadoff baserunner.

horsefeathers, I like that. Make this hump feel the burn of the Cubs' Starters' 1st Inning Curse, too.

*Sigh*

According to BR he's had an OBP of .352 or much better over the last 28 days, and a BA of .272 or better. If Drinky Joe is going for some kind of second leadoff guy or whatever since the 2018 Cubs have obliterated the idea of a "normal" 3-4 setup, I guess it makes sense.

I'm kinda surprised there's not a wonky conspiracy theory out there about Kato and the OJ murders just based on those tweets alone.

He has not subsequently done a whole lot to warrant comparison to Rizzo or Harper. This kind of analysis is the modern version of "But he hits .312 in day games on Tuesdays." There are so many peripherals now that if you keep digging, you can find one that you like about the guy. Maybe it's exit velocity, maybe it's LD%, maybe he's due some BABIP luck, maybe you like the K/BB ratio, maybe he's got an above-average Z-swing% (RIP alcantara 2beautiful4thisworld), maybe his contact rate is too big leagues to ignore. There's always something. Maaaaybe David Bote is the next Ryan Theriot, and granted offensive output is so low these days that you basically just have to be not Rey Ordonez to be useful in the middle infield, but there was a time that stat-savvy fans knew what to make out of the guy with OK but not great numbers in AA and AAA who comes up and hits well for 82 plate appearances.

HE WILL WEATHER THE STORM OF ADJUSTMENTS.

The Yankees one just looks like some kind of lazy bootleg.

I tainted those results talking about something else entirely.