Aaron Kennelly

Ok, I'm starting to wonder if Cogs maybe should be on the playoff roster.

Scrubs, indeed.

Nice. He could be an MVP candidate soon, if it weren't for the yips.

You are so terrible.

Willie loves throwing people out.

Is that good?

http://i.imgur.com/7drHiqr.gif?noredirect

It could be a lot worse. Our pitching could be going through what it went through before the All-Star break. Look, hitting is weird. Guys slump and then get hot. And it's weird. It's often impossible to explain. Sometimes maybe there was a swing change or something. But most of the time it happens with the snap of a finger. And it's impossible to explain. Think of what they are doing: trying to hit a projectile travelling at excess speeds with a stick. If you are just a little off, things aren't going to go well. But slumping hitters, generally, are who they are. They're just... off. They'll get better soon, though. Sometimes you'll run into a case like Jason Heyward's, where it's not just a slump. But, most of the time it's nothing physical. It's probably not even mechanical. Guys are always tinkering with stuff, and it doesn't matter too much. Slumps just happen. And a lot of it might not even be because of the hitter; there could be BABIP luck holding them back or whatever. Now, pitching. That's a different beast. When you see something like what was happening to our pitchers before the All-Star break, that's a little more scary. When pitchers are off, there often is a problem. And it is usually their fault. When they are serving up gopher balls left and right, it's not just a slump, per se. It could be mechanical. It could be that the guy is just worse. He could be getting old. He could be wearing down. He might be injured. Sometimes pitchers do bad for awhile and then bounce back and look normal. But, it's always scarier. Sometimes god-mode Arrieta is never realized again. So, maybe Zobrist is wearing down. But maybe it's just a slump. And even if he is wearing down, he's still taking walks. He can still help contribute. And he's not exactly our most important hitter, anyway. So I try not worry about that stuff as much. Instead, I'm happy that our pitching is healthy and Lester and Hendricks look as sharp as ever. And I'll just hope something clicks at the right time for some of our hitters.

I wasn't really responding to you. I was responding more to the hand wringing we've seen the last week or so in Game Threads and what not. And, I do agree with you -- that we are missing a little thump in the middle of the order. The loss of Schwarber sucked. Bad. We went from the donging beasts we thought we were going to be to something entirely different. But, that's OK. Because we've accomplished a lot with what we are now. And I think Soler can serve as an ersatz Schwarber, if he is healthy and feeling it. You mentioned how it drops off after Bryzzo, and it does. I would like one other uber-beast in the middle of the order. But Soler can be that guy. He was last year in the playoffs. But what TT says is also true. We are so good not because of uber-beasts in the middle of the order, although we do have two. It's because of how deep we are -- so deep that some decent baseball players aren't even going to make the roster. There is a little pop up and down the lineup. Heyward's the one guy on the roster that hasn't given us pop. So we make up for not having another 30-dong guy by having our shortstop hitting 20-some and all of our catchers donging some. And, that's not why we are good anyway. Our offense thrives because we are always on base. And our team's great strength is in its run prevention. So these guys make up for not donging as we'd hoped by glove donging like we never expected.

You guys are too worried about when proven players have hit their home runs this year. Zobrist has been about an .800 OPS, 15-home run guy basically his whole career. He is again this year. I don't care too much that his mostly came earlier this year. I don't care that Fowler's came mostly earlier this year. And I don't care that Kris Bryant is slumping right now. I mean, seriously, people are worried that the MVP hasn't been hitting right for the last couple weeks? Players and, in extension, their teams go through hot and cold streaks all the time. Let's just be glad that it is happening right now and not then. And, I mean, there are still a couple weeks until the playoffs even start. I don't care if this slump lasts all the way up until the playoffs start -- as long as they are hot during the playoffs. Just forget about it. Everything resets in the playoffs. And we've assembled the best roster to take into the playoffs. You'll forget all about it when Bryant is donging all over the Mets in the NLDS.

He's got a 1.58 ERA. How many guys in the post-season do you think have lower ERAs? Unless we get to the World Series: none. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=nl&qual=50&type=8&season=2016&month=0&season1=2016&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=16,a

He's got a 1.58 ERA. How many guys in the post-season do you think have lower ERAs?

Shocker.

Fly outs to the wall are the worst.

That was stupid.

Spencer's not cut out for the big leagues.

Can he, though? Against LHP, yes, which is all he'd be asked to do in a short series. Soler hitting well and Baez's defense, flexibility, and offensive potential means the non-Baez portion of the bench is basically whoever they want to catch and various pinch hitters. Eh, I guess. I don't mean to diminish Szczur too much. I like him. But the idea of him being "pinch hit guy" is just a little gross to me. I also like the idea of an Almora/Fowler/Heyward late inning defense. I like that Almora has that one elite skill. It doesn't matter too much to me, though. We've got a lot of nice options. And they all fill various roles that make them each intriguing in different ways.

Because Szczur can hit and Fowler isn't going to get pulled for defensive purposes. Can he, though?

Speaking of the playoff roster. Why not Almora over Szczur?

Sorry, JD, but he's not good enough to demand a certain catcher.

We could split our team in half and finish first and second in the division.

lol

He will almost certainly be the starting catcher at this point. He's even doing much better behind the plate in terms of blocking pitches, not as much with his arm,. He's actually also doing better with his arm. Since August 3rd, he's thrown out 4 of 11 attempted base stealers. He was 3/52 before that. I saw a tweet from one of the Statcast guys recently on one of his CS that he had a league average pop time and league average arm strength on that throw. I don't want to take much from a 25 PA sample or however long it is that he's been hot. But he looks much better. And I think he is a good bet to have a nice bounce-back year next year. I really do think he was playing injured earlier this year. I don't think this has necessarily been an issue of him aging. If you look at aging curves, a couple of the big things that stick out are K-rate and BB-rate. When guys lose it, those things plummet. It's a good indicator that a guy is toast and not coming back. It's not the same for every guy. But, if you look at things like power, you'll see a more gradual decrease, starting even earlier, while the player is still useful. It's not quite as noticeable. And you can still survive losing bits of your game at a time. When you start striking out at unprecedented rates and quit drawing walks, you become useless really fast. Just look at some of the old guys that have been horrible this year and are packing it up: Ryan Howard, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira. Dead giveaways. Miggy's year has been a little more strange. The ISO is down from last year, but it's still up from where it was the two years prior. It seems kinda normal. His power might keep slowly slipping away. But it hasn't outright plummeted. In fact, his HR/FB is above his career average. If you look at his batted ball profile, some things become evident. His GB% is way up above where it's always been. You don't want that kind of guy hitting more ground balls: Slow, chubby, lefty pull-hitter with power to carry the ball over the fence. His hard-hit rate is also down a lot. He just hasn't hit the ball like you'd like. But, if we look at those tell-tale signs of aging... he's been fantastic in that department. He's walking more. His O-Swing% was trending in the wrong direction, until this year, as he's shown a keener eye than ever. His contact% was way down last year, and he's brought it way up, above league average even. Those things are encouraging to me. It tells me his main problem was that something was jacked up with his swing. It could be because he was aging. But it doesn't jump out at me like that. It could be any number of things -- like with Jason Heyward. And the main reason I think he was playing injured was because of those throws we saw from him. My goodness, that was an awful time. Like, there's no way that was just from aging. You don't go from being a competent major league catcher to throwing six-hoppers into second overnight. Right? And if we look at his whole season, starting in Spring Training, it looks an awful lot like he was hiding an injury. Not that we can take much from Spring Training stats, but he was amazing this Spring. He hit for pop. He hit for average. He didn't strike out. He was taking walks. Then, he was mashing the ball the first two weeks of the season. He hit a homer on opening day. He hit two balls off the top of the wall in Arizona, in a deep part of the park. He was racking up hits and walks. Then he tweaked something and went on the DL like 10 days later, admitting that he was trying to play through it. He was horrible for that week or two he was trying to play through it. Then, he rushes back like two weeks later, while Willson is tearing through AAA and fans are clamoring for him to be called up. And from that moment on, Miggy was horrible -- at everything. He couldn't hit; he couldn't throw; he couldn't block pitches. And now he looks normal. Maybe it is aging. Maybe it's just the start of his decline. And you can't just dismiss it as him being injured. That's part of the problem of aging. Your body breaks down and you can't stay healthy. So we can't just assume, "Oh he was injured, but now he'll be fine forever." We may go through the same horsefeathers next year. But, if he can rebound a little, he's still a useful player. His arm is still going to be pretty bad. That part of his game is probably gone for good. But, a healthy, normal Miggy can still hit some, especially if he carries over something close to this type of plate discipline. And, according to StatCorner, he's been the best pitch framer in the majors this year, on a per game basis, and by a healthy margin. Anyway... I'm back on board with Miggy for one last hurrah next year. And maybe I should have just made this an article.

They should probably worry about just finishing over .500 at this point.