Cubswin11

My decision to Switch to YouTube TV keeps getting better

Any time you can replicate the wildly successful and popular ESPN 3 person Sunday Night booth you gotta do it

I don’t particularly care for any of them but those are decent gets since they’re all ESPN/MLBN full time guys currently

No Kelly, boo

Venable says he’s staying on the staff for the year, he was in contention for the Astros job. Fwiw.

If he’s somehow healthy for even 20-30 innings that would be huge.

Taylor Davis just signed somewhere else, guessing he’s taking that role. He’s pretty solid for a 3rd catcher.

Remember all Bucks fans are Brewer fans. So no.

His FB is 93-95, even though that’s below average that’s still decent. Elite spin guy, he throws his slider a lot (31% last year). With the curve spin numbers wonder if they tinker with that a bit and have him ditch the slider. I’d assume him and the Rule 5 guy make the team out of spring with 1-2 spots left (I think) open to the 15 or so guys competing.

Fire Ross

Ok, so I'm not saying this is the only cause, but taken in conjunction with the Rizzo quote about not stealing signs, it would explain why the Cubs players didn't seem to benefit as much as others. I mean there’s literally been studies showing the ball is materially different which would lead it to going further (lower seams, different “pill”, wound tighter, etc). Maybe sign stealing exasperated it like the swing/approach change, launch angle focus, but the ball being different is still the driver.

Ankle still not 100%. Cool, cool. Probably gonna hear they finally got around to doing to proper scan in spring and found out he needs a procedure and their rest and run rehab didn’t work. [tweet]https://twitter.com/mdgonzales/status/1217964816758984705[/tweet] [tweet] [/tweet]

Alright we need Yelich and the Brewers to be found out on this cheating stuff. Would check all the boxes.

Hopefully this is an informed comment with him and the FO being on the same page and not him just spouting off whatever/the FO keeping him in the dark.

Solid name, hope he makes it, he’s a big dude too 6’6” 250+

They did it last year with Ryan, Wick and Wieck. I have faith they can figure it out with another 1-3 guys this year given the quantity and more flexibility the bullpen options have vs last year (almost all have minor league options left so they can get aggressive with shuffling through). You were happy with the bullpen last year? There's nothing wrong with stockpiling LIAB guys with options in the hope that a couple of them will come through like Wick. It's when you're depending on them to be the staple guys in the pen that you're inviting disaster. And counting on a guy like Wick to be able to sustain his success - as much as I like him - is a big gamble in itself. As for Ryan and Wieck, the former wasn't actually all that great and the latter was far too small a sample size to draw any conclusions about. Sure it's a gamble and inviting disaster to a degree, but so is signing vets and depending on them like Brach, Carl, Duensing, etc of years past. Of course I wasn't happy with it but the point was they were able to take unknowns and find something with 3 guys, I have faith they can do it again. My biggest gripe with the pen last year was they weren't aggressive with getting guys up sooner because they were stuck with bad vets without options. Wick should've been up much sooner. Joe also seemed to make the wrong mistakes often (no entirely his fault given the talent wasn't great but he managed the pen poorly). How wasn't Ryan all that great? ERA/FIP in the 3s, good GB rate (13th best GB rate of all qualified RPs), limited HR's, good enough K numbers, BB were a bit high but he's been better in that area before, he was really good vs lefties and adequate enough vs RHB to be able to face 1-2 in an outing with the new 3 batter rule. He also changed up his pitch mix a bit from previous years (more cutters and curves and cut back FB usage and essentially stopped throwing his change). As a guy who projects to be the 3rd to 6th best RP (depending on how things shake out) I think he's plenty solid. Wieck obviously was a small sample but the eye test and numbers say he was really good, again also changed his pitch mix once he came over.