Aaron Kennelly

Matz done for the year? That's shocking.

The correct is answer is definitely the Mets, though. They just got swept at home by the Braves. This is a bad baseball team. They are lucky the Wild Card fell back to them. Whoever wins it is going to be an 86-win team. It's going to be a bad playoff team. And the Mets are the worst of the bunch. Their offense is old and they aren't athletic. They are also just bad. Really bad. They can't hit for average. They don't walk. They strike out a lot. They are really bad at running the bases. They are bad defensively. They hit for a little power. But they all sell out for power. That's their only skill, and they lack in other areas offensively because of it. They don't go the other way, or try to get base hits, or doubles down the line. They sell out for power. They are the Cardinals, except they are much worse at it than the Cardinals. Their best position player -- Walker -- is injured. Of their healthy players, Asdrubal Cabrera has the second-most WAR. Curtis Granderson is third, with 1.5. Just yesterday, they started T.J. Rivera, Alejandro De Aza, James Loney, and Rene Rivera. Last year's Mets team was different. And they had everything clicking at the right time. Guys like Cespedes, Duda, and Granderson all had incredible second-halves and continued playing over their heads into the playoffs. And then Daniel Murphy turned into god-mode. And Wright and d'Arnaud were inexplicably healthy. And they made some nice moves bringing in some solid veterans like Uribe to augment the lineup and bench. And Conforto was pre-broken. And the pitching... Somehow the stars were aligned for all those guys to be healthy at the same time last year. Harvey... gone. DeGrom... gone. Matz hasn't pitched in a month, and has had problems with the bone spur and now his shoulder, not to mention a lengthy injury history already. If they are relying on him to be healthy, they are playing with fire. Even Syndergaard hasn't been quite the same since they found out he had a bone spur, either. He's walking a few more guys, he isn't striking out quite as many. He's been prone to have a blow-up game where nothing is working. He's having trouble putting guys away, and he isn't working as deep into games. He's still been very good, but not quite as infallible as he looked earlier this year. And Colon doesn't concern me at all. He's somehow put together a very strong year despite being 65-years-old and throwing nothing but 87-mph fastballs. But, still, he's striking out less than 6 per 9 innings. And if you look at his season, he's feasted against inferior lineups. That horsefeathers might fly against the Braves and Phillies, who don't know how to put together ABs. But look at his numbers against us, the Dodgers, and Nationals. We will feast off of him. He isn't sneaking things past our guys. And if Matz isn't healthy, he's their second best starter, and the only one that will pitch twice. Bring on the Mets.

Of course the Mets fans want to play us. They literally have to play us if the get in the wild Card and win. We (Cubs fans) can pick and choose who we want to play. They can't. So they irrationally think that they can beat us, because they know they have to.

I'm gonna say that has to be one of their occasional data entry errors. They aren't 5 percentage points less likely than us to make it to the NLCS but more likely to win it despite that. Either that or all of these other teams are suddenly becoming much better while we wait for them to finish up their seasons.

Let's just win every game the rest of the year.

That thing was smoked.

MVP!

I love the Reds.

Miggy!

Miggy!

http://mlb.mlb.com/images/0/9/4/151774094/092615_chc_cubhouse_med_usrnzcem.gif

http://imoviequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/203-Dumb-and-Dumber-quotes.gif

Maybe that they do well in all types of 1-run games? If this were only happening in 2-1 and 1-0 games, it might be indicative of having a few strong starters, with a lock-down bullpen, and maybe sprinkle in some elite defense. But, that's not really the case, anyway, as their bullpen has been bad. But, being 13-4 in one-run games in which they've given up at least 4 runs is really weird. I guess I never really saw it as anything very skill or merit based and mostly just dumb luck, so I hadn't given any thought to the whys. Same here. I do find it somewhat interesting that they've had this type of dumb luck in all these different types of games, though. I guess that's to be expected when their record in these situations is so crazy fluky, though.

what am i missing about the actual scores other than the fact that they've won a lot of one run games Maybe that they do well in all types of 1-run games? If this were only happening in 2-1 and 1-0 games, it might be indicative of having a few strong starters, with a lock-down bullpen, and maybe sprinkle in some elite defense. But, that's not really the case, anyway, as their bullpen has been bad. But, being 13-4 in one-run games in which they've given up at least 4 runs is really weird.

Basically, Hendricks uses his whole repertoire early. He tries to throw strikes and get ahead of guys, while keeping them off-balance. And when he gets in trouble, that's when the changeup comes out and he turns into god-mode Cy Hendricks.

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2016/9/21/12994168/kyle-hendricks-cubs-cy-young-clutch-runners-on-base-strand-rate-changeup

#wearegood

Everything about that was amazing.

Yeah, Theo definitely didn't have to call a guy when he needed Hammel to go on bereavement leave.

Theo as ski is probably the greatest thing ever. Now I'll never be able to not imagine it as Theo saying, "Christ. Get some runs, you scrubs."

I love how when we were in the midst of the death spiral before the break, there was a game in New York when they showed Theo in the stands. And we were getting our asses handed to us -- losing by, like, 12 runs. And Theo was just chilling, eating a hot dog. No sweat. When in reality, behind the scenes, he was smashing his phone into bits. And he was sitting there, eating his hot dog, like this:

I'm salivating thinking about what this kid could turn into. In the second half this year: .261/.325/.478 with a 19.7% K% in 228 PA. There was this article awhile ago about him tapping into his power: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/here-is-a-powered-up-addison-russell/ But, there's other good stuff going on, too. For instance, his contact rate. His contact% since the break is 75.6%. And it just keeps going up: http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=14106&legend=1&statArr=107&split=base&time=game&ymin=&ymax=&start=2016&end=2016&rtype=mult&gt1=30 And that's coming while his ISO keeps going up: http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=14106&legend=1,2&statArr=40&split=base&time=game&ymin=&ymax=&start=2016&end=2016&rtype=single&gt1=30 I'd like to see him walk a little more, like he was earlier in the year. He's been way more aggressive. But you can't really argue with the results. Still, he's freaking 22 and he keeps improving at things that he wasn't so great at, to go with everything that he was already great at. He's going to be a monster.

Uh oh.

http://thumbs.newschoolers.com/index.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fgifs.gifbin.com%2F1237381185_b218933.gif&size=400x1000

Give me more dongs.