Aaron Kennelly

I'd buy into this, except if the plane started going down, I know Javy would take the wheel and land it safely. He'd probably do a few cool tricks with it first, though.

Do those 202 at bats include all the home runs you're saying doesn't count? Just curious. i've never said they didn't count, i've said they've masked how pitiful our offense has been so far. Usually good things mask bad things when looking at a sample.

Yeah, but Rizzo seems to go through these stretches 2-3 times a season and then snap right out of it. Russell should be dropped in the lineup, but I'm not sure it'll happen if Heyward and Montero start Game 3. Yeah, I'm still not worried about Rizzo and never will be. This just happens. And it's happened with him a lot. But it doesn't usually last too long. And he's a really good hitter. There was something posted somewhere on here awhile ago -- I don't remember where. But it was a screencap of his BRef page or something, showing how consistent he is each year. It's just that there are droughts in each of those years that you can't see. He's in one of those. And we haven't needed him. We do now, or most likely will at some point. But I'm not going to freak out about it. There's nothing we can do about it. Just keep sticking him in there and hope something clicks. I thought he looked a little better tonight, though. He took that walk. He didn't strike out. He was oh-so-close to taking him deep. I can't recall any horrible swings that we've seen the previous week. He'll be fine. And if we last long enough, he'll snap out of it eventually. Russell is a different story. He's really young. He's still going through growing pains. He's done this several times in his career already. And his slumps have lasted way too long until he corrects course. It's still kinda the same thing, though. You just hope he snaps out of it. But there's enough reason to think he won't that he should be dropped in the order. But it's not like this is some epidemic that is going to take this team down. It's the same freaking team we've had all year. And guys have slumped throughout the season. The bigger picture is this: We can win any game we play because of our pitching, defense, base running, intangibles, and a cache of good hitters. We've won 4 of the 6 playoff games we've played so far. We were shut down by Jonny Cueto and Clayton Kershaw and still went 1-1 in those games. We're fine. We're winning the World Series.

Are there still ninnies here? After all we've been through?

There's just no reason for that ball from Javy not to go 15 feet further. horsefeathers. He would be a deity.

That'll do.

Well, I'm no longer uncertain. We are winning this game. And when we get to use actual major league hitters again, they are getting to him. It's just a matter of which inning it happens in.

Please, please, please get lucky

Well, we are hitting him hard now.

Where are you now, wind?

Mother horsefeathering horsefeathers

Now get me a horsefeathering run.

Fuuuuuu...

Willie is going deep.

That was huge.

This is going to be a fun ninth-inning comeback.

So, basically they don't need to shift because Javy doesn't need any help over there. Maybe you slide Russell over a little, where it is more likely that a ball will be batted. And that helps make sure there is no hole up the middle. But why would you ever stick a player next to Javy? Just let Javy be Javy. And if Zobrist is at second, it's basically the same thing. Give Zobrist his little zone over on the right side and let Addi handle everything else. We are good enough defensively that balls hardly ever get through the infield without a shift. So why stick all these guys with insane range next to each other? The ball isn't get past them anyway. I was glad he addressed this because you keep hearing on the national broadcasts (or home team radio during the season) how the Cubs shift less than any other team. Clearly the way they align defensively isn't accounted for (which is great, ASFAIC). The Lester anti-bunt-defense is a great example. The Pittsburgh announcers were completely befuddled by it (and Hurdle's challenge re Zobrist, I think at the time, needing to wear the 1Bman glove). The broadcasters ended up assuring each other that it was a play that Rizzo & Zobrist dreamed up in the dugout and that 'you'd never see that in a game that mattered.' Yeah, it's one of those things where, intuitively, you wonder if they are leaving a few more outs on the field by not shifting as much, since shifting has been shown to work. However, the Cubs are way better at turning ground balls into outs than anyone else. Whatever they are doing is working. And you have to wonder if, as Joe just said in that quote, they just shift a little differently, either because of a different understanding of what proper defensive alignment should be or because of our personnel. It's not like they decided on a whim, "Screw shifting." The front office is obviously analytically inclined, and Maddon used to shift a bunch, even when others weren't. I think it's safe to say that they saw something that they felt necessitated a change.

Even more fun: the perceived victory in a hypothetical game that Mets fans had.

I've seen a lot of that, too. "Imagine that, the game ends on a Dodgers' hard-hit ball for an out." Yep, that's what happens when you are playing against the best defensive team in the history of baseball. Get used to it. That's not even mentioning that, while the game technically ended on a hard-hit Dodgers' ball for an out, it really ended on a hard-hit Cubs' grand slam. And if you look at the overall pitching lines -- walks, strikeouts, homers -- the Cubs clearly outplayed them. And two of their runs came in an inning where a bunch of fluky, stupid horsefeathers happened. There was no luck involved. We kicked their ass.

So, basically they don't need to shift because Javy doesn't need any help over there. Maybe you slide Russell over a little, where it is more likely that a ball will be batted. And that helps make sure there is no hole up the middle. But why would you ever stick a player next to Javy? Just let Javy be Javy. And if Zobrist is at second, it's basically the same thing. Give Zobrist his little zone over on the right side and let Addi handle everything else. We are good enough defensively that balls hardly ever get through the infield without a shift. So why stick all these guys with insane range next to each other? The ball isn't get past them anyway.

There's not ANY Cardinal I'd rather have than Javy. Are you sure I can't interest you in a 26-year-old second baseman with a career .679 OPS in 1,500 PA?

Instincts are second to none.

I've never been this happy to have grown up a Cubs fan.

Honestly, I'm not sure if we'll lose again until 2017, maybe 2018.

Having cashed in one of their magic tickets (any Kershaw start) and still being down 2-0 doesn't seem like a good spot to be in. Let's put them in that hole.