Sammy Sofa

If Castellanos doesn't do something good here, his time as a Cub has been worthless.

I'm hoping for a sweep. faster ouster for Maddon. Sadly, I don't think they'd ever give him the boot before the end of the season. They'll placate the meatballs and let the WS-winning manager toddle off into the sunset after it's all over.

Yes. But did Fray have other songs that would be notable enough for this to be "a Fray song" and just that one song? I honestly don't remember, not just being snarky. I'm going to assume no.

here is kyle's favorite story Remember that one Scrubs episode where they tell you that 1 in 3 patients die and introduce you to three really cool patients? Then at the end, all three die because some days the odds don't even help you and Cox has a breakdown. Wasn't it because Cox gave them all horsefeathering rabies and then a Fray song played?

weis made it in time, so that Mills-y goodness is all his.

This is so horsefeathering good it should be on a headstone.

I mean, I guess people are liking this post because it's so well explained via the usual excellent TT standards, because otherwise it is so horsefeathering depressing.

Man, would moving Schwarber really be that "shocking" outside of it just being Theo finally for once not clinging desperately to the idea that one of his pet His Guys can't be moved? Like, I don't see him bringing much back unless he's packaged with someone else notable.

Well, yeah, that comes back to just how nigh-catastrophically bad they've developed pitching talent. Your bullpen is more likely to blow up if you have to rely overwhelmingly on guys you have to bring on because they didn't even manage to develop some legit horsefeathering relievers.

Hey, TWO division rivals are doing it to them this time! 2 is more than 1, and all for basically the same payroll! Progress, baby!

If they get credit for the 9th then they get knocked for not showing up until the 9th I mean, it was Happ, who is bad, Bote who is bad (and, unfortunately, got paid), and Castellanos, who is good, but an insanely impatient/aggressive hitter. Not an ideal trio of players to pin anything on.

I believe he got the rug pulled on him, no way he spent what he did in the offseason going in to 2018 if he knew it would keep us out of last offseasons market entirely. And weren’t the owners in Boston behind some of those big deals? Crawford I think? They hired like a PR firm to dictate targets that would be popular or something. They maxed out their 2019 budget in 2018 when Yu was still available late in the winter and was cheaper than they expected and knew they’d have a need for a starter so they went for it. At least that’s the party line, but it seems fairly plausible. I think even with the fickle nature of relievers they didn’t anticipate Carl and Strop being completely worthless, Morrow they should have signed and then assumed we’d get nothing from him due to his injury history. In terms of OF, in the 17-18 offseason they were probably expecting Schwarber to be more like 2nd half 17 Schwarber and possibly improve, Happ to improve to a solid regular etc. They took some risks but ultimately felt they filled all their holes for the next 2 years. That’s not to say there weren’t glaring holes in that logic but I’m guessing that was their thinking if they did actually have a payroll restriction. Cubs took a lot of risks and most of them blew up in their face For me, the Chatwood and Morrow signings are just inexcusably stupid. Darvish makes total sense, and it sucks the first season+ went like it did, but that move makes sense. Shelling out that much for those two mopes if there's ANY inkling that money might be getting harder to come by? Get the horsefeathers out of here.

See, I expect them to do something annoying, like, finishing with a 3-game win streak where they pointlessly rack up more of that sweet, sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet RD with some absolute blowouts, but they're already out of it.

Pretty much the difference between these teams is that STL can crap out ace starters and relievers whenever needed and we have to desperately sign anyone in sight and pray to God they don't horsefeathering suck. AKA the Cubs suck at drafting pitchers and got WAY too horsefeathering cute thinking they could build a bullpen mostly out of soft-tossing, oft-injured mutants and inexplicably bucking the trend of anchoring it with hard throwers like seemingly EVERYONE ELSE HAS BEEN DOING.

Man, I love the PTR meme more than anyone, but I will never believe ever that the FO was suddenly broadsided by out of nowhere financial restrictions by the Ricketts. Yeah, the owners are lame as horsefeathers, but this is largely a repeat of the kind of horsefeathers bad spending Epstein got bogged down by in Boston. I believe he got the rug pulled on him, no way he spent what he did in the offseason going in to 2018 if he knew it would keep us out of last offseasons market entirely. And weren’t the owners in Boston behind some of those big deals? Crawford I think? They hired like a PR firm to dictate targets that would be popular or something. So the take now is that under two different sets of owners Epstein has been ambushed/bamboozled financially? That's some astonishing bad luck. Personally, I think he likes to smell his own farts, figured the team constructed largely as is would be enough, and scared himself off of spending more by his terrible spending from the previous offseason. He knows he's pretty bad at this big FA thing more often than is comfortable.

I'd say this whole game was, given that this is apparently Joe's managing approach now:

Both signing Kimbrel and trading for Castellanos were the type of moves this galaxy-brained FO should have done in their sleep BEFORE THE horsefeathering SEASON STARTED. Like, who could have possibly predicted the terrible bullpen and the terrible OF would be areas of need? GEE, IT'S A REAL PUZZLER. Theo wanted both (obviously). Those are on PTR Man, I love the PTR meme more than anyone, but I will never believe ever that the FO was suddenly broadsided by out of nowhere financial restrictions by the Ricketts. Yeah, the owners are lame as horsefeathers, but this is largely a repeat of the kind of horsefeathers bad spending Epstein got bogged down by in Boston.

Assuming health I think he’ll be fine, not lock down like the past but good enough. He’s still throwing 96+ and has the breaker. Yup. If they had just signed him on a normal horsefeathering schedule he probably would have been fine, even if it was just the version of Kimbrel through most of the 2018 season.

Both signing Kimbrel and trading for Castellanos were the type of moves this galaxy-brained FO should have done in their sleep BEFORE THE horsefeathering SEASON STARTED. Like, who could have possibly predicted the terrible bullpen and the terrible OF would be areas of need? GEE, IT'S A REAL PUZZLER.

In the sense that umps are terrible and pretty much every team has been getting screwed over by their terrible calls, yes. If you mean "actively" as in the umps inexplicably have some sort of reason to call the Cubs even worse than usual, then what the hell, dude. That's bonkers.

Cubs' current playoff status:

Wrigleyville. horsefeathers....I'm still only in Wrigleyville...