Clem Fandango

Bobby Basham would've been a great Backyard Baseball character

MLB admitted that the pill inside the ball was of a different size which may have been affecting the trajectory and distance the ball travels since they went with a different manufacturer for their baseballs, iirc.

The thing that will forever upset me about the juiced ball era and the Cubs is that all these other teams had guys who struggled to reach 20 home runs crushing 30 dongs a year and our two biggest HR threats, Rizzo and Bryant, can barely reach 30. I know Bryant had his shoulder issues and he was plenty valuable as was, but a fully healthy Bryant should have no issues hitting 40+ in this juiced ball environment and Rizzo shouldn't be struggling to reach a number that guys like Ketel Marte and Yuli Gurriel and Kole Calhoun and Mitch Garver reached with relative ease. Meanwhile, our biggest benefactor from the juiced ball was probably Jason Heyward who hit 21 homers and managed to boost his offense to replacement level production. Huzzah.

Yu has always kind of been susceptible to long balls though, granted he was in Texas, but still.

Nevermind the fact that all the superstar and high-value players on that roster... Kershaw, Buehler, Ryu, Jansen, Bellinger, Seager, Turner, Pederson. They were all drafted, traded for, or signed before he got there. The best acquisition Friedman has made has probably been Max Muncy and the best FA signing with the best return on investment has probably been Brandon Morrow. His highest-profile trades were for 2-month rentals of Yu Darvish and Manny Machado. He let Zack Greinke walk and traded Yordan Alvarez for Josh Fields and has spent most of his FA money on retaining the talent they already had before he got there and securing their rights well past ther prime years. You can say that guys like Bellinger and Buehler thrived in a development environment that Friedman had put in place, but the Dodgers were never short on young talent coming up through the ranks and those were higher profile draft picks. Friedman is good at keeping costs down and drafting and developing talent, and that's great that the Dodgers are doing a bang-up job in that department, but Friedman makes garbage outside acquisitions and big money decisions. He Dusty'd his way into a juggernaut of a team. The next 5 years will determine how good Friedman really is vs. the past 5 years when he's relied on the talents of players that were brought into the organization by Ned Colletti, who got fired after back to back 1st place finishes resulted in NL playoff losses. Meanwhile, Friedman's teams have finished first every year of his tenure and lost 3 NL playoff series and back-to-back world series. That means the Dodgers have finished first for 7 years in a row and have nothing to show for it and 5 of those years were at Friedman's helm. But he's a genius or something.

Division Title Flags Fly Forever

Sam Fuld remains untouchable

Holy horsefeathers

Missed that, sandwiched between two long posts/tweets.

WOW

Maybe Joe will give Trout some justice and get him into the playoffs.

I'm surprised Yadi didn't charge the mound

Didn't they just pick up his option? what the hell are they doing in Pittsburgh? Wooing Joe Maddon to come back to Pennsylvania.

Am I the only one who thinks the Cubs aren't going to make a strong effort to acquire elite talent this offseason?

I saw the higlight of almora robbing him twice but what happened after that? Hamels hit him with a pitch that really wasn't close to being objectionable and for reasons known only to him he decided to get in Hamels' face and the benches cleared. Was literally coming here to say I watched the highlights and Yadier Molina is a whiny little bitch. I feel like any other player who gets robbed twice in one game by the same player would take it in stride and even tip his cap to what Almora did, but Yadi just got angry and gave a death stare the other day. Then this happens. Hell it looked like he even leaned into it a bit and it barely grazed his elbow pad and he takes offense to that?

Some pretty awesome milestones last night. Pete Alonso hit his rookie record 53rd home run and Justin Verlander reached the 3,000K club. Verlander also reached 300K's for the season, just the 18th pitcher in the modern era to do so, and 2nd this year after Gerrit Cole.

They came out a while back and admitted the pill at the center of the ball was different from previous baseballs, IIRC.

He probably did nothing because the Ricketts pulled the money rug out from under him, and it seemed obvious that was why. That said, they absolutely could've done better.

Also, they projected 80-82, fwiw. I thought it was 82-80 originally

Reads a lot like a Leo Mazzone retrospective.

Don't have a subscription so I can't read it, but BP wrote something about the Cubs' woes... https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/53628/prospectus-notebook-fear-and-loathing-in-wrigleyville/